Disillusionment
by soylentOrange
Summary: When Fry is cruelly dumped out of the Planet Express Ship by Professor Farnsworth he comes to realise that his life in the future is not what it should be. Now Fry must come to terms with the world and with himself while trying to find where he belongs.
1. Chapter 1

Disillusionment

By Soylent Orange

**Part One: 200 feet above the Hudson River, April 26****th****, 3002**

Fry stared out the bridge's forward window as the sparkling lights of New New York glided by below him. Over and over again he replayed the past few days in his head, trying to figure out what he could have done differently. There had to be something that he'd missed; something that would have kept Michelle from leaving. Maybe if he'd built her a better shelter out in the desert, or if he'd been less visibly shaken by the weird mixture of civilization and post-apocalyptic wasteland that was Los Angeles… There had to be _something_. But there wasn't.

Fry's self-pity abruptly turned to frustration. "That's it. I've had it with women." He declared aloud. "From now on, I'm concentrating on my career." Fry turned to face Professor Farnsworth, who was sitting next to Bender on the bridge couch. "Can I have my old job back?" He pleaded.

Farnsworth scratched his chin. "Why, I've forgotten why I even fired you." He said at last

That's when Bender cut in. "'Cause he destroyed your business, your home and all your possessions." He said, matter of factly.

"Oh, that's right." The professor said pensively. He paused for a moment. Suddenly anger flashed in the old scientist's eyes. He reached for a lever next to the couch. "Get lost!" he growled.

The professor pulled back on the lever and the deck under Fry's feet dropped out from under him. Suddenly he was engulfed in roaring darkness, lit only by the glaring blue fire of the PE ship's hastily retreating darkmatter engines and the soft yellow glow of the distant buildings. The wind from the Planet Express Ship's passing tossed him around like a rag doll and he began to tumble. For a few short seconds there was nothing but the sensation of falling and the whoosh of air. The ground rushed up to meet him.

"Oh god, my head."

Fry moaned and sat up. A wave of nausea washed through him and he quickly lay down again.

"W- where am I?" He mumbled, rolling onto his side. Wherever he was, it was dark. All he could make out were a few lumpy, anonymous shapes nearby. In the distance there were a few skyscrapers, which Fry recognized by their tiny lights. As he watched, the lights moved slowly by from left to right.

Fry forced himself to sit up again. His head swam and he almost passed out, but by gritting his teeth he was able to hold on until his head cleared.

For a few minutes Fry just sat still, letting the throbbing at his temples dissipate. When he was relatively sure that he wasn't going to fall over, he cautiously forced himself to stand. Again he looked around. In the few minutes that he had been conscious his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and from his new vantage point he could see enough to bring his surroundings into focus. He was standing on some kind of elastic fabric, almost like rubber. The fabric was covering a pile of some anonymous material with the consistency of foam, which Fry had landed on top of. Beyond the pile was a short drop-off with water at the bottom. The water glowed faintly silver where starlight and the dim illumination from the distant buildings reflected off its surface, and seemed to be flowing.

Curious, Fry clambered down the small elastic-covered mountain that he had landed on. It was hard work, as his feet kept sinking into whatever it was that he was climbing on. He soon reached the base of the pile and found himself on a metal floor.

"No, not a floor." He realized. "A deck." Now he remembered that The Planet Express Ship had been flying over the Hudson River when it had dropped him. Somehow he'd been lucky enough to land on a barge that was making its way downriver.

Fry walked the couple of paces to the handrail that girdled the huge watercraft and looked down into the water. Farnsworth had ejected him from high enough up in the air that hitting the water would probably have stunned him, or even knocked him out completely. He could easily have drowned.

"What the heck was the Professor thinking?" Fry asked himself as the anger built inside him. "I could have died! Even though I pretty much blew up the Planet Express building, he had no reason to drop me out of the ship!"

And then there was Bender.

"That traitor." Fry growled, knowing that Farnsworth would have given him his job back if the robot hadn't spoken up. "With a best friend like that, who needs enemies? And anyway, it's not like I blew up Planet Express all by myself."

Actually, now that he thought about it, he had taken a lot more of the punishment than was really fair. The whole thing had been Bender's idea. The robot had been the one to suggest they steal the ship's keys, and he'd also been the one to actually do the physical stealing of the ship. Fry had just gone along for the ride, and had gotten caught up in things. "Bender should have been the one that the Professor dumped overboard, not me." Fry muttered. "I'll bet that jerk even gets his job back at Planet Express." The thought made him furious.

For a full five minutes Fry just stood and glowered at the silent cityscape as it slowly slid by. The whole life that he had been constructing for himself in the future had unraveled in less than a week. He had lost his job, his girlfriend had deserted him, and his best friend had sold him out. Abruptly he came to a decision.

"Well, screw them." Fry said aloud, his voice full of emotion. "When I came to the future I got a chance to start over. I promised myself that this time I wouldn't be a total loser. Well now's the time for me to prove it."

With one fluid motion Fry propelled himself over the railing and dropped into the cool waters of the Hudson. When his head emerged he turned himself to face the dark bulk of the barge. For a few seconds he treaded water, watching the silent hulk fade into the distance. When it had disappeared into the blackness Fry rolled onto his stomach and began to swim, moving his arms and legs in the rhythm that Leela had taught him after he'd nearly drowned at the Wormulon Slurm Factory.

The shore was a lot farther away than Fry had thought. By the time his feet touched the bottom he was exhausted. His lungs heaving, he climbed a low barrier wall and hobbled to a nearby bench. He sat there silently for a full ten minutes before his wet clothes began to make him cold. Finally, having regained his wind and his resolve, Fry stood and began to walk confidently in the direction of his apartment.

By the time Fry made it back to the Robot Arms apartment complex his clothes had mostly dried except for his shoes, which made soft, squishing noises as his feet moved inside them.

Bender wasn't home, as Fry had expected. He had no way to know how long he'd lain unconscious on the barge, but if Fry'd been asked to guess he would have said less than an hour. He thought that he'd been dropped out of the Planet Express Ship around nine o'clock, and it had taken him just under an hour to swim to shore, hike to the nearest transport tube, and tube home. That made the time just slightly before eleven. By now Fry's robotic roommate would have had plenty of time to leave Planet Express, come home to pick up some beer and some cash, and head out again for a night on the town.

"Hopefully he only took _his_ money this time." Fry muttered darkly. No matter how well he hid it, the bending robot managed to find any cash that Fry kept in the apartment. Normally it didn't matter all that much to him. Ever since his brush with wealth a few months after he'd been unfrozen, Fry hadn't been too concerned with money. He'd witnessed firsthand what wealth could do to a person; what it had done to him. Since then the meager salary he made at Planet Express, and more recently at Applied Cryogenics, had been more than enough for him to be content. But if Fry was going to pull off the plan that was slowly unfolding in his mind he was going to need every spare penny that he could salvage.

Fry stepped through the small space that was Bender's half of the apartment into the giant walk-in closet that served as his home. Turning on the light he gave it a long, silent look, remembering the good times that he had had there. Then, starting at the corner into which his bed had been shoved and working his way clockwise around the room, the ex-delivery boy began to sort through the piles of trash and half-eaten food for things that he wanted to take with him, placing everything to be kept on top of his unkempt bed. When he was finished he had built up a small pile: a few pairs of rarely-worn extra clothes, the holophoner he'd recently purchased on a whim (and as yet been unable to learn to play even remotely well), a few miscellaneous items for hygiene, cooking, cleaning, and such, and a single framed picture of himself posing with Leela and Bender in front of the Planet Express Building. Fry picked up the picture and gazed at it. He felt a sharp pang of regret. As angry and frustrated as he was at the moment with Bender, Farnsworth, and the whole future in general, he was going to miss the life he was leaving behind.

"Besides", he thought, "if I do this, I'll be leaving behind all the people who _didn't_ turn their backs on me too. Like Leela."

If there was one person who had really been treated unfairly recently, it had been Leela. Farnsworth had held her just as responsible for the destruction of the Planet Express building as her two shipmates, since she'd unthinkingly left the keys in the starship's ignition. Even after the stupid comments that he and Bender had made to her when Hermes had made it clear that she was also being dismissed, Leela had been more than gracious. She'd helped Fry get a job, and even managed to stay civil after the career chips had gotten mixed up and she'd had to settle for a menial pizza delivery job while Fry had gotten her old job at Applied Cryogenics. She'd even organized a search when Fry and his girlfriend Michelle had gone missing.

Fry carefully put the picture down. Leaving Leela was going to be hard. She'd been there for him when no one else was, and he'd come to cherish her company. Fry walked over to his closet and dragged out his small suitcase. In a few moments everything that he owned was stashed inside the bag. Taking one last look around the apartment, Fry turned off the light, walked through his roommate's tiny living space, and set off down the hallway. As he was about to press the elevator call button he hesitated, thinking that maybe he should have left his roommate a note.

"Nah." He told himself at length. "Bender'll get the message."


	2. Chapter 2

When Fry finally made to work in the morning he was thoroughly drenched. A large storm system had worked its way out of the Ohio River Valley and blanketed New New York in a cold, driving rain. He'd stayed in a cheap hotel for the night, and he'd gotten what he'd paid for. At about 4:00 in the morning a rivulet of water sprang from the ceiling and hit him square in the face. In hindsight, maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to choose a hotel claiming to have the oldest colony of mildew within five parsecs.

Applied Cryogenics was even quieter than usual for a Thursday morning. Fry walked to the elevator and hit the button for the 64th floor. The elevator climbed twenty-five stories (the other thirty-nine floors were now under ground level, having become the basement when the streets of New New York had been constructed over the ruins of the old city) and stopped abruptly. Fry left the elevator car and headed toward his office, carefully tiptoeing his way past the open office door of his boss, Ipgee, who was busily typing away at his computer. The last thing Fry wanted was for Ipgee to discover that he was fifteen minutes late for work. Using every bit of criminal sneaking he ever learned from watching Bender, Fry stealthily crept past the door to his boss's offi-

"Ah, Fry. There you are."

Fry cringed. Resigning himself to the inevitable lecture, he turned and walked into his boss's office. Ipgee motioned for him to close the door behind him, which made Fry gulp involuntarily.

Ipgee clasped his hands and leaned back in his office chair. "Come over here, Fry. We have something which we need to discuss."

Nervously, Fry approached his boss. "Uhh, Mr Ipgee, Sir, about where I've been the past two days-"

Ipgee interrupted with a wave of the hand. "It is no problem. You're friend Leela called yesterday to tell me what happened. These things happen all the time. You're lucky you were only frozen for two days. Why. just last month we found a summer intern who had accidentally fallen into one of the tubes while she was cleaning it. She was stuck in there for thirty-two years. Sometimes people get frozen and wake up in a whole different century, but you already know that."

Fry nodded grimly. When he'd woken up after falling into the freezer tube in 1999, _ten_ centuries had passed.

Ipgee sat forward in his chair. "But I did not call you in here to ask about where you have been since Monday afternoon. I just got a call from Prime Minister Bender. It seems he has been called back to his country to deal with some kind of big crisis, so he will not be able to continue working here."

_More like Professor Farnsworth gave him his old job back and he couldn't resist playing his Prime Minister of Norway routine one last time_. Fry thought. Still, that was good news. It meant that Fry wouldn't have to deal with his ex-roommate at work. Avoiding the bending robot, who was no doubt still oblivious to the harm he'd caused his best friend, would have been all but impossible in the confines of Applied Cryogenics.

"Anyway, like I was saying," Ipgee continued. "Bender will no longer be here, that will make you the only employee we have to council defrostees. You will have to run the whole department."

Fry stared at his boss, mouth agape. "Wait, are you saying that I'm being promoted?!"

There was a moment's hesitation before Ipgee replied. "Yes, I suppose in a way it is a promotion, but really it is more of-"

Fry threw his hands up over his head. "Whahoo! I'm being promot- Hey wait a minute." He said, interrupting himself. "If I'm being promoted now that Bender's gone, does that mean that Bender used to outrank me?"

"Well, yes of course. Technically the Prime Minister of Norway even outranks _me_. But again, 'promotion' probably isn't the best word to use-"

"That jerk even outranks me _here_." Fry muttered darkly. Then he had a sudden thought and his face brightened. "Wait. If I'm getting promoted, does that mean I'm getting a raise?" He asked hopefully. A bit of extra cash would definitely come in handy now that he was looking for a new apartment.

Ipgee sat deeper into his chair. "No, absolutely not."

"Oh. Then what about a new office?"

Ipgee sighed. "No."

"Do I get anything?"

Ipgee just shook his head.

It took a few seconds for Fry to mull this over. "So," he finally began, "now I have to do all the work that I usually do, plus everything that Bender had to do, and I don't get a raise or a bigger office or anything?"

"That is correct."

There was a moment of silence. Then Fry flung his hands over his head again.

"Whahoo! I'm being promoted!" He hollered.

There had been two people on the defrosting list. The first had been an old man from the late 23rd century who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. He had frozen himself in the hope that a cure would be found during the long time he was in hibernation. It was a common theme. The man, Fry had forgotten his name, had been rude and impatient to leave. Fry wasn't sure what the guy's problem had been, although in retrospect he admitted, it might have had something to do with the fact that, upon awakening, he had been confronted by Fry, clothes askew and tongue lolling, claiming to be a brain-hungry space zombie.

The other defrostee had been a young Asian woman about Fry's age from the early 21st century. Upon walking out of her tube, her eyes had immediately fixed on the futuristic scene outside the room's large window. At the sight of the hovercars whizzing by the window, the color had drained from her face and she had turned to Fry, eyes wide.

"W-who are you?" She had demanded.

"My name's Fry." He had responded, the 'space plague' prank he had been planning evaporating at the sight of the girl's distress. "I'm a Cryogenics Councilor. Welc-"

On cue, Terry ducked his head in the doorway. "Welcome to the world of Tomorrow!" He announced dramatically, cutting Fry off mid-sentence. His job finished, Terry leaned back into the hall, the door closing behind him.

"So this is the future?" She'd asked when Terry had been gone for a few moments.. "It really worked?"

"Yep. It's April 27th, 3002. What year are you from?"

"2012- Wait, _what_?!" She looked at Fry as though he'd hit her. "Did you say 3002?!" I was only supposed to be frozen for five years!"

Fry froze. His mouth worked, but nothing intelligible came out. Finally he managed to force out a simple, "Huh?"

"Five years. I thought the war would be over by then. They said I'd be frozen for _five years_!" There was panic in the young woman's voice. Tears started to well in the corners of her eyes as she began to realize the full implications of her displacement in time.

Not knowing what else to do, Fry put an arm around the distraught woman and gently guided her to the desk that sat in the far corner of the room. The woman sagged into the wooden chair facing Fry's desk. As Fry took his place in the leather chair on the other side of the desk, he realized that he didn't even know her name yet.

Fry fumbled for something to say, but couldn't come up with anything. He was suddenly intensely angry at himself. Here he was, probably the single most qualified person in the universe to help a person in her situation and he was too tongue-tied to say anything intelligible.

"What's your name?" He asked at length, having come up with nothing else.

"W-what?" She asked between sobs.

"What's your name?" Fry repeated gently.

"C-Chelsea." Her eyes rose to meet his.

"Well Chelsea, it's not as bad as you think. I'm from the 20th century. I was a delivery boy for a pizza place in the city and on New Years Eve of 1999 I got sent on a delivery to Applied Cryogenics…" For the next ten minutes Fry narrated the series of events that had catapulted him into the future. Chelsea seemed bewildered, and a little frightened, by Fry's description of robots and aliens. Her eyes went wide when he told her of his discovery of the decaying ruins of the old city that lay beneath the streets.

"When I saw the place I used to take my girlfriend skating, it really hit me that everyone and everything I knew was gone forever." Fry remembered the overwhelming feeling of loss that had fallen on him like a cloud. He shuddered. "The only two people I knew were a drunk robot and a crazy cyclops that kept trying to jab me." Fry fell silent.

Chelsea spoke up a few moments later. "What did you do?" She asked, softly.

"I accepted it." Fry said. "I realized that Leela was only trying to help me and I let her stick me. Only she didn't stick me…" He explained how Leela had been unable to go through with the chip implantation and how the two of them, along with Bender, had ended up getting jobs at Planet Express.

"But what about your friends and family from the 20th century?"

Fry shrugged, a little sadly. "I miss them. I always will."

When Fry didn't say anything else, Chelsea's shoulders slumped. She'd been hoping for something more encouraging, but Fry wasn't about to lie to her. He still missed his old life, and even though the pain was less every day, it never went completely away.

Neither of them said anything for a full minute. Finally it was Chelsea who broke the silence. "So what do I do now?" She asked.

Fry smiled. "Well, remember those career chips I told you about?"

"This heres is out cheapest unit." The landlord said, leading Fry into a tiny, one-room apartment. It was smaller than Bender's closet, but, as Fry immediately noticed, it was furnished. His interest was immediately piqued.

Hoping to give the impression that he actually knew what he was doing, Fry gave the apartment a close inspection. "Uh. Does this building have an owl problem?" He asked, having noticed a small hole at the base of a wall.

"The owls come withs the apartment. Free ofs charge." After a moment's hesitation, the landlord, whose name Fry had already forgotten, added "Owl poison will costs yous extra."

Fry tried to make himself stop for a moment. _Alright, Fry. Think this through_. He commanded himself. _This is your chance to show that you're not a screw-up. Now think. What questions would Leela ask if she was here? _"Uhh, why is the apartment furnished already?" He hoped it was a smart question.

"The guy who lived heres left one day and never came back." The landlord shrugged. "He left alls of his stuff."

"And nobody knows what happened to him?" Fry asked, curious.

"Hells if I knows." The landlord replied, dismissively. "Probably nobody knows he's gone."

Fry was incredulous. "You didn't file a police report?"

"What do I looks like, a guy who's not lazy?" The landlord replied, somewhat irritated. "Now do yous want this apartment, or nots?"

Fry gave his surrounding one last look and came do a decision. "Yes." He said. "I do."

Dropping his belongings in a corner, Fry sank into the soft cushions of his new couch. For the first time in as long as he could recall, he was actually fairly pleased with himself. After he'd left work, Fry had gone to a nearby cybercafé to look for an apartment on the Internet. It hadn't been long before he had come across an ad for the Quantum Estates apartment building. The ad's proclamation that Quantum Estates was designed for people 'who know where they are in life, but not where they are going, or how fast they will get there.' had resonated with his own situation, and so he had decided to investigate. Just two hours later, he signed a lease.

The apartment was small, just one room, but it was better than living in a closet. And besides, it was _his_. Smiling at the thought, Fry lay back on the couch and closed his eyes. In a matter of minutes the gentle patter of rain on the apartment's window had lulled him into a deep sleep.

Hours later, Fry woke with a start. Someone was pounding on his door. Grumbling to himself and only half awake, Fry forced himself to stand up and shuffle to the door. Stifling a yawn, he pressed a small button on the door's control panel. It immediately swished open, revealing an extremely disgruntled cyclops.

"Fry!" Leela exclaimed and then burst into the room. "Why didn't you tell me you were OK?!" She demanded. "I thought you were dead!"

Fry, startled to suddenly find Leela's face only a few inches from his own, took an involuntary step backward. "Umm, wha?" He managed, his brain not having had time to fully decipher what was going on.

Leela crossed her arms and glared at him. "After the Professor dumped you out of the ship you never bothered to let anybody know you were ok. I only found out that you were even _alive_ when I called Ipgee to tell him what had happened and he said you'd just left work fifteen minutes earlier!"

Fry started to respond, then sighed. "Maybe we should sit down." He said, gesturing to the couch. Leela, having expected some stupid excuse, was caught off guard. Unnerved, she walked over to the worn sofa and sat down.

"I'm sorry I didn't call or anything." Fry said at length. "I didn't mean to scare you… It's just, well, I was angry."

"At me?" Leela asked, surprised.

Fry's eyes went wide. "No, not at you!" He blurted. "At Bender, and the Professor. Bender for once again stabbing me in the back, and the Professor for dropping me out of a spaceship."

"Ah. Speaking of which, how did you manage to survive the fall?"

"Well, first of all, I landed on a barge loaded with some kind of weird foam…" Fry filled Leela in on the last 24 hours. Leela listened intently, and when Fry had finished she sat quietly for a few moments, and asked one simple question:

"So when're you coming back?"

Fry blinked a couple of times, confused. "What do you mean?"

"You know," Leela said, "When are you coming back to Planet Express?"

Fry regarded her for a moment, wondering how much of his story she'd actually listened to. "But Leela" He said softly. "That's the point. I'm _not_ coming back." It took a little more effort to get the words out than Fry had been expecting. Somehow, it felt like telling Leela goodbye.

Leela didn't notice the strain in the redhead's voice. She just stared at him. "I don't understand. All you have to do is wait a few days and the Professor will forget why he fired you all over again."

Fry sighed again. "Leela." He hesitated for a moment, not quite sure how to put his thoughts into words. "Do you remember what I said to you the day I was unfrozen? You know, right before your computer told us that my permanent career assignment was going to be 'delivery boy'?"

Leela thought for a moment. "You told me that you had been given another chance, and that this time you weren't going to be a total loser." She frowned. "But I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"It has _everything_ to do with anything!" Fry said, jumping up from his seat, agitated. He began to pace back and forth in front of the couch. "When I got to the future I told myself that I was going to turn my life around. Back in the 20th century I was miserable. My life was going nowhere. Then I got a chance to start all over again, and do you know what I realized yesterday, after I landed on that barge? My life _still_ isn't going anywhere! I've been here for almost a year and what have I done for myself? I've been living in a robot's closet, working a dead end job, and women still either ignore me or treat me like dirt." Leela stirred a little, as if to interrupt his tirade, but thought better of it. "Well not anymore!" Fry continued. "I've got a job that I'm good at, I have my own apartment, and I can finally say that my life isn't pointless!"

Fry's words stung. _Hadn't their friendship been worth something to him?_ "But what about your friends?" Leela asked quietly.

Fry stopped his pacing. "Friends?" He echoed, and then laughed. "What friends? Bender sells me up the river any chance he gets, and everybody else I know either doesn't like me or just wants to take advantage of me."

"Well, I like you. And I don't take advantage of you."

Fry caught the hurt look in Leela's eye and stopped waving his arms. "I didn't mean you, Leela." He said gently, sitting down beside her. "You've always been there for me. Even after Bender and I got you fired you tried to help, and you didn't sell me out to get your job back from the Professor like Bender did."

Leela cringed, remembering guiltily how she'd done just that. The thought that she'd so casually taken her friend for granted left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. Fry continuted to speak, unaware of the turmoil in Leela's mind.

"I just hope that jerk robot feels bad about what he did to me." Fry paused, having thought of something. "Hey, how did you find me anyway? I didn't tell anybody I was moving in here."

"It wasn't easy." Leela admitted. It took me a few moments to realize that the Professor had thrown you overboard. There wasn't much I could do; there weren't any places to land the ship nearby, and I couldn't see well enough in the dark to search for you from the air. As soon as I got back to Planet Express I went looking for you, but I had no idea where you'd fallen. A few hours ago I called Ipgee to tell him that you were missing again and he told me that, not only had you been in to work today, but that you were out searching for an apartment. I knew you'd probably get pressured into agreeing to the first contract you came across, so I asked Hermes to access the Central Bureaucracy's database. He looked through all of the leases that were signed today, and your name finally came up." A moment later she added "And give Bender a break. Sure, he's a jerk, but he's your best friend. He doesn't mean to be such a pain in the ass, he just is. Besides, he'll be really shook up when I tell him that you're not coming back."

Fry nodded. "I know he doesn't mean it. I just can't take it anymore. I mean, come on. We both know it was really his idea to steal the ship, and then instead of taking responsibility for what he did, he let us all take the fall. And then, when he was sure the Professor had forgotten why he'd fired us he asked for his old job back, and got it! But instead of helping me out when I asked for _my_ job back, he told the Professor that I was responsible for destroying his business and all of his possessions. As if Bender wasn't just as responsible as I was!"

"Oh come on, Fry. Bender couldn't exactly have helped you get your job back. The Professor only gave us our jobs back after you disappeared. The first time we asked him for our jobs back he didn't even- oh _shat_ner." Leela clamped her mouth shut before she could say any more, but it was too late.

"And then, when we were flying back-" He hesitated. Something that Leela had just said was important. A glimmer of a thought appeared. "What do you mean, 'the first time?'" Fry asked, more confused than suspicious.

"Umm, never mind. I meant- uhh- nothing. Yeah, that's it, nothing." Leela smiled weakly.

The rusting gears in Fry's head, creaking in protest against the unfamiliar strain, finally ground into motion. Fry's eyes narrowed. "You asked Farnsworth for your job back before I disappeared, didn't you?" He correctly interpreted Leela's uncomfortable silence as a yes. "Why didn't you want to tell me?" He asked, confused.

Leela fumbled for an answer. "Well, you know. I thought you liked your job at Applied Cryogenics, and I didn't want you to think you had to leave and come back to Planet Express just because Bender and I did."

Fry crossed his arms. "If you thought I enjoyed Applied Cryogenics so much, then why did you just ask me when I was coming back to Planet Express?"

Leela's mouth worked, but no sound came out. Pieces slowly began to click into place in Fry's brain.

"You tried to do it behind my back, didn't you? You didn't want me to know that you were working for the Professor again." Fry stood, walked a few paces and whirled around. Pointing accusingly, he said "You and Bender tried to secretly get your jobs back without telling me. And now you come looking for me, trying to convince me to come back to Planet Express. Why? Do you need a scapegoat again? Is that it?!"

Leela stared at her friend, mouth agape. She had never seen him this angry before, especially at _her_. Slowly the cyclops got to her feet. "That's not how it was." She said coolly. "Bender and I went to the Professor and asked him to give us our jobs back. He told us that he had a new crew and that, with you fired, he didn't have to worry about his jigsaw puzzles getting eaten. We figured that he'd still rehire us without you, but when he didn't, I decided not to tell you about it so that what we'd done wouldn't hurt your feelings."

"Uh-huh. I'll bet my feelings were the _first_ thing on your mind." Fry said, his voice dripping sarcasm. "Some friend you are."

"Hey, now hold on a min-." Leela started

Fry made a slashing motion with his hand, cutting Leela off. "Get out." He said.

"What?"

"Get out." Fry repeated, pointing to the door.

"Fry, please…" Leela begged, but the hard look in Fry's eyes told her that it was pointless.

"I said _leave_!"

"Alright, _fine_." Leela snapped suddenly, surprising herself. "If you want things to be this way, then that's ok with me. Just don't come crying to me when you finally realize that you've screwed up and lost all of your friends!" With that she turned and stomped out of the apartment. Fry, who had his back to her, didn't even turn to watch her leave.


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Two: Deep Space, June 5****th****, 3002**

"… and that's why I changed from pink fingernail polish to yellow fingernail polish."

Leela just kept staring out the front viewport, completely lost in her thoughts. Amy got up from her seat at navigation and waved a hand in front of the cyclops' face to make sure she was even awake.

"Uhh, Leela? Are you ok?"

Leela reacted as though she'd been shocked. "Huh, what? What's going on? Is something wrong?"

Amy cocked her head. "Uhh, no, but I was starting to get a little worried. I just told a fifteen-minute story about fingernail polish and you didn't even roll your eye once. I wanted to make sure you were alright."

"Yeah, I'm fine." Leela said, forcing a weak smile. "I was just thinking, and I guess I kinda got lost in my head."

"You were thinking about Fry again, weren't you?" Amy asked as she sat back down in her seat by the communications gear.

"Yeah." Leela admitted. "I mean, I know it's not a coincidence that Planet Express has been three times as profitable since he got fired, but for some reason I just don't like my job anymore, even with the raise that Hermes gave us."

"You like him, don't you?" The intern asked, knowingly.

"W-what?" Leela stammered. "No! What on Space Earth gave you that idea?"

Amy was surprised by her Captain's outburst "Well you know, you two spend so much time together, I just figured…" She shrugged.

Leela shook her head. "No, it was never like that. I mean, we had a couple of moments. Like on the Titanic right before it got sucked into that black hole, but nothing serious. Besides, I don't think it matters much anymore."

"What do you mean?"

Leela hesitated. She had told her coworkers that Fry wasn't going to be coming back to Planet Express, but she hadn't mentioned the fight that she had had with the delivery boy. She hadn't even explained why Fry hadn't contacted anyone but her after he had been tossed overboard, or even told anyone that she knew where he was. Her coworkers suspected that she knew more than she was telling, but as yet none of them had pushed her on the subject. After storming out of Fry's apartment she had had a long walk home in the rain in which to cool off. By the time that she'd gotten back to her apartment her anger had subsided somewhat, and she'd even felt a pang of regret. But then her mental defenses, honed by years of continuous emotional bombardment by society's cruel nature, snapped firmly into place against the pain that Fry had caused her. From that point onward she attempted to think of the delivery boy as little as possible.

"Well…" Leela began, reluctantly deciding that Amy had the right to know, regardless of how uncomfortable it was to talk about.

Amy waited expectantly while Leela gathered her thoughts, the autopilot beeping softly in the background.

"I talked to Fry after he disappeared. Face-to-face, I mean." Leela managed at last.

Amy looked surprised. "But you said he just left a note at your apartment saying he wasn't coming back."

"I know. I don't know why I lied. I think it just hurt too much to talk about it. Fry and I had a fight. A big one. I found out where he was living and went to have a talk with him. He got so angry with me that he told me to leave, and I don't think he'll ever speak to me again."

"What?!" The intern was shocked. "Fry threw you out of his apartment?! That's so out of character for him! He must have been really angry at you."

Leela gave the intern a pained expression. "He found out that Bender and I secretly tried to get our jobs back without him. We knew we had a better shot at getting Farnsworth to rehire us if Fry wasn't around, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Now he thinks that everyone stabbed him in the back, like we all just wanted to take advantage of him."

"Oh." Amy said. "well that's too ba-"

But Leela wasn't finished. Her eye narrowed, and her grip tightened on the steering wheel. "I tried to explain that I was just trying to keep from hurting him, but would he listen? No. But then, he never does, does he? Everything he does is so… reckless! Drinking that Trisolarian Emperor, locking himself in a freezer tube with that crazy ex-girlfriend of his, trying to sell his lungs, and now this! Instead of listening to me, he decides to abandon everyone that cares about him and start over."

Hesitantly, Amy tried to offer a few words in Fry's defense. "Spleesh, Leela. He's not that bad. He means well. And anyway, if he wasn't so reckless he wouldn't have come to the future at all, and you'd still be stuck in that job that you always say you hated so much."

The harsh look on Leela's face softened slightly.

"Besides," Amy added cautiously, "doesn't he have a point? We did kinda take him for granted. Remember how on each delivery we used to fly a quarter mile farther away from the place where Fry had to deliver the package, just to see how far he'd walk before he started to catch on? We haven't exactly been very nice to him, especially Bender. And then you went and did something that made him feel betrayed-"

"Betrayed?!" Leela roared, real anger flashing in her eye. "What right does _h_e have to feel betrayed? It's because of him that I lost my job in the first place. Farnsworth fired me because Bender and Fry stole the ship. I mean, what the hell? How can I get canned for someone else's blunder? But did Fry stand up for me? No. He let me take the fall with him, as if it was all a big joke. I mean, I expect that kind of crap from Bender, but I thought Fry and I were friends. Fry betrayed _me_, not the other way around!"

Amy's response was a tiny, intimidated squeak. "Oh." She said. The bridge fell into silence, a silence that the intern was too scared to break until the ship reached its destination.

Two tense hours later, the Planet Express Ship glided into the atmosphere of a small terrestrial world. The planet was smaller and less massive than Earth, but what it lacked in stature it made up for in sheer beauty. The brilliant blue light from the nearby star shone down on clouds of carbon dioxide and water vapor. Oceans covered nearly half of the planet's surface, with all of the dry land contained in a single gigantic continent. At the landmass's center was a bleak, wind-swept desert, but the continent's edge was tintet green and purple by what looked like vegetation. Leela brought the ship in low through a valley between two snow-capped mountain ranges. The peaks, able to grow to dizzying heights in the weak gravity, easily reached 40,000 feet.

After a few minutes, the valley began to widen, and the mountains became rolling hills. The Planet Express Ship was soon flying over a flat, featureless plain. Leela set the ship down near the coordinates that she had been given and removed the keys from the ignition. As the ship's engines powered down, Bender came walking in through the hatch, holding the package under one arm.

"Hey chumps. Are we there yet?" Asked the robot.

Leela glanced at the robot and then out the viewport. The PE Ship was resting in the middle of a sprawling plain. Rather than grass, the ground was covered in something that looked like purple moss. The tops of distant mountains could just be seen, their bases hidden by the curve of the planet. There was no sign of civilization anywhere. She frowned. "Yeah, we're here alright, wherever here is. The Professor was pretty cryptic about this mission; all he gave me was a set of galactic coordinates for the planet and a latitude and longitude to land at. He wouldn't even tell me what's in the package that we're delivering."

"Did he at least tell you where we're supposed to deliver it once we landed?" Amy asked.

Leela shook her head. "No. I figured that it would be obvious once we landed. But I don't know about you guys, but I don't see anybody around."

"Maybe we're in the wrong place?" Bender offered. "No offense, but you know what they say about human drivers."

The two humans ignored him. "Should we call the Professor, you know, to make sure he gave us the right coordinates?" Amy asked.

After thinking for a second, Leela took the package from Bender. She showed the intern the shipping label, which had the coordinates of its destination marked on it in clear black ink. Hermes' red stamp sat squarely in the middle of the label. Everyone present knew that no shipping label, pay stub, or miscellaneous document bearing the Jamaican's seal of approval would contain an error capable of being overlooked by his zealous bureaucratic scrutiny.

Amy was obviously a bit perplexed. "Huh. Well then what do we do now?"

"Well, since Hermes probably didn't give us bad information, we can probably assume that there's people around here somewhere. We just can't see them from here for some reason. Maybe they live underground like on Subterra IV. I think the best thing to do is to head outside and look around. Maybe we'll find something that will tell us which way we should go."

Amy, Bender, and Leela stood at the airlock. The Martian intern had the package, since she was technically the new delivery girl. Leela pressed the button that would open the inner hatch, and the three of them squeezed into the uncomfortably small space. When Bender hit the button that would cycle the lock, a red light began to flash and a buzzer sounded three times. Surprised, and a little irritated, Leela pushed Bender's hand out of the way and pressed the button. Again there was a red light followed by the buzzer.

"Hey guys?" Bender and Leela awkwardly turned to face the intern in the cramped compartment. "There's a message on this screen thingy over here." Amy continued. "It says that the atmosphere is toxic. The ship won't let us outside unless we have suits on."

"What, really?" Leela asked, genuinely surprised. "We've never delivered to a planet with an non-breathable atmosphere before. Why wouldn't Hermes have mentioned that?" Not that it really mattered. _Besides_, she thought, _it shouldn't be a surprise. Not every planet in the universe has been terraformed to human standards._

The two humans and the robot clambered out of the airlock, and as Bender waited impatiently, Leela went and fetched two spacesuits. In a matter of moments the three of them were back in the airlock. This time, when Leela pressed the 'cycle' button there was the hiss of the airlock's atmosphere being drawn into the ship, and another hiss as air from outside was allowed in. When the interior and exterior pressures reached equilibrium the outer hatch swung open, and the trio walked down the ramp to the planet's surface.

The purple ground under Leela's feet felt soft and spongy. Curious, the PE Captain bent down and grabbed a handful of the mossy purple stuff that coated the ground as far as the eye could see. It came free of the ground with a soft sucking noise that was barely audible through Leela's helmet. She held the moss up to her face and looked closely at it. It was only a shade or two darker than her hair and looked like the foam that was stuffed into cheap mattresses. After a few moments, the stuff started to squirm in Leela's gloved hand. The PE Captain dropped it, grossed out more than she cared to admit.

When Leela looked up, Bender and Amy were a few dozen meters ahead. When they realized that she had fallen behind they stopped and waited for her to catch up.

"Everything ok?" Amy asked.

"Yeah, fine." Leela replied, and motioned for her two friends to keep walking.

For what seemed like hours Leela and her two companions searched the countryside for some clue that there was sentient life nearby. Leela led the way while Amy, who was not used to long distance hiking, fought doggedly to keep up. Bender took up the rear, caught between a need to whine about being forced to work so hard and a desire to flout his robotic superiority. The going was rough. Walking on the moss was like walking through deep snow. Leela kept sinking into the stuff up to her shins, and she had a hard time keeping her balance. Worst of all, every time she lifted her feet the moss seemed to pull at her spacesuit's boot as if there was some kind of suction. Eventually, Leela was too tired and frustrated to continue.

"That's it." She said between panting intakes of breath. Bender and Amy stopped beside their Captain, glad for the rest. "There's nobody here. Let's get back to the ship. Maybe if we fly around for awhile we'll see something. If not, then screw it. We'll go home and Hermes can deliver the package himself."

Amy nodded, too exhausted for words. The intern, panting hard, handed the package to bender and sat down on the soft ground. Bender stuffed the small box in his chest cabinet and then turned away. He froze.

"Umm, meatbags?" Bender asked with uncharacteristic alarm.

Leela turned to face him. "Yes, Bender?"

"Uhh, what color was our spaceship when we left?"

Leela gave the robot an odd look. "Umm. Green? The color that it's always been?"

Bender pointed off in the direction of the ship. It was a lot farther away than Leela had realized. Distance was hard to measure on the flat, featureless plain, but it looked they had wandered a mile at least from the ship. Even at this distance she could clearly see what had caught the bending robot's attention. The once-green spaceship was now a dark purple, the same color as the moss.

Amy let in a sharp intake of breath, and Leela felt her heart skip a beat. "The ship must be covered with this purple moss stuff!" Amy exclaimed.

"Come on, back to the ship!" Leela ordered, and she began to fight her way through the moss. A moment later there was a loud scream. Leela whirled to face the sound, laser pistol drawn. There was no alien monster, just Bender standing idly with his arms crossed and Amy sitting cross-legged in the moss. There was a look of panic on the intern's face.

"Leela, it's got me!" She cried. As Leela watched, horrified, Amy tried unsuccessfully to dislodge herself from the purple moss. A thin film of the stuff was starting to crawl its way up the sides of her spacesuit.

"Bender, help me get her free!" Leela yelled. Bender, obviously reluctant to do any more work than was absolutely necessary, only budged when the PE Captain shot him her most dangerous glare. Leela grabbed Amy's left arm while Bender grabbed her right.

"Ok, on the count of three, pull! One. Two… Three!" Amy's bottom came free of the moss with a loud pop. Unfortunately, Bender had pulled a little too hard, and Amy's suited figure went sailing through the air. She hit Bender square in the chest and knocked the robot backward. The two of them landed in a heap. Leela, who was still gripping Amy's arm, lost her balance and felt her feet leave the ground. Suddenly she was also lying flat out on the ground. The PE Captain tried to get up, but something held her in place. A thin sheet of purple started to climb the edge of her helmet.

"Damn. I can't move. The moss is holding me down. Are you guys alright?"

Amy and Bender both assured her that they were. Unfortunately, they were also both stuck.

The moss began to creep its way up Leela's helmet, until she was completely encased in it. All she could see was a dull purple glow. Whether she was seeing dim sunlight or whether the moss was somehow weakly fluorescent, the PE Captain had no idea. Amy and Bender were silent. Leela had tried to keep up a conversation with them so as to keep up morale, but she'd quickly run out of encouraging things to say. She also knew that they expected her to be the one that got them out of this, and so she had spent the last few minutes thinking. She went over their situation one more time, trying to find anything that they could use to their advantage.

"Let's see. I could probably reach the autopilot on communicator, but the ship might be just as stuck as we are. Besides, even if the ship lands two feet away it won't do us any good if we can't move. She'd already asked Bender if he had something that could cut or burn its way through the moss. The robot listed off at least half a dozen different tools that he had that might do the trick. Unfortunately they were all in his chest cabinet, which the moss was currently preventing him from opening. Leela had a knife strapped to her leg and the laser pistol at her waist, but she wasn't even able to move her hand enough to reach them. For the tenth time she cursed herself for holstering her weapon before helping Amy. If she still had it in her hand it might actually have done some good.

As far as the PE Captain could discern, they had no options. But that was unacceptable. There had to be _some_ way out of this. She was damned well not going to die at the hands of some stupid alien plant. She had to think of a way out of this, and she had to do it fast. The layer of moss collecting around her was growing thicker by the minute. Every minute she delayed made it just a little more likely that her spacesuit would become her tomb.


	4. Chapter 4

"Hey meatsack, think you could overclock your CPU for a minute and find a way out of here? You know, before I die of boredom?"

Leela ignored the robot. She had been stuck in the moss for two hours now. Her legs were cramped, and her right cheek was sore from being pressed up against the side of her suit's faceplate. It was maddening to be held prisoner like this. She desperately wanted to pound her fist into something, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make the suit's arm budge an inch. How the moss could be so soft when she walked on it and yet so completely unyielding when she was laying in it, she had no idea.

Frustrated, but not giving up hope, Leela mentally reviewed her options yet again. Could they somehow cut themselves loose? The answer was still a disappointing no. In order to do that, one of them would have to be able to move an arm. Maybe the moss would let go of them if they inflicted enough pain on it. _How about shocking it somehow?_ Not likely. Both of the spacesuits were heavily insulated, and Bender couldn't risk using himself as a ground without potentially frying his circuitry. _What about burning?_

Leela sighed. _Nope, no way- hey, hold on a minute._ "Wait. That's it! Bender, I need you to give us the biggest flaming burp you can come up with."

The bending robot was delighted. "You got it, big boots!" He then proceeded to let out a mighty belch. The moment a lick of flame touched the amorphous purple moss that had collected around the robot's mouth, it started to sizzle. Nothing else happened.

Amy's anxious voice floated into Leela's ears over the suit radio. "Well guys? Did it work?"

"N-" Leela began, but then there was a brilliant flash of white followed by a noise like two planets colliding. The two humans and the robot were flung into the air like rag dolls. Or at least, Leela thought it was the air. It looked more like she was tumbling through the interior of the sun. All she could see was a wall of light. The heat was so intense that she could actually feel a little warmth through the high-tech fabric of her spacesuit. Even with her visor at full opacity, the glare was enough to make her eye water. Abruptly, her flight ended in a collision with the ground that took the breath out of her. She bounced once and then rolled a few meters before coming to rest on her back. Stunned, she could only stare blankly as the light turned from white to orange, then to red, and finally to black. She just stared up into the sky, completely unable to function. Time passed. Maybe it was a few seconds, maybe a few hours.

A savage blow to the side of her helmet finally broke her out of her daze. She blinked and labored to get her eye to focus again. The hazy gray blob that stood over her finally coalesced into Bender, apparently unharmed, idly smoking a cigar while looking at her curiously.

"You alright?" Bender asked, making it clear in his tone that he didn't really care one way or the other.

"Yeah, I'm-" _Wait a minute…_ Leela thought. _Smoking a cigar?_ The PE Captain bolted to her feet in a wave of adrenaline and snatched the Zuban from the robot. She pressed it into her gloved hand until it smoked and died. Then she whirled on her mechanical friend. "What the hell are you doing?! Are you trying to set off another explosion?!"

Bender made no attempt to hide his disdain. "Uh, look around, meatsack. It doesn't take a genius like me, Bender, to see that there's nothing left to explode."

For the first time, Leela actually looked at her surroundings. The landscape wasn't quite the same as she remembered. A light rain of soot fell from brooding clouds of grey ash. The purple moss was gone, replaced by a black plain of scorched rock. A thick haze of smoke cast everything in a dim murk. Leela bent down and brushed away a thin coating of ash. The rock underneath was smooth as glass, which was exactly what it was. The fireball that Bender had set off had been hot enough to flash-melt solid rock.

"Well, looks like you really screwed this one up," Bender said brightly in the background.

Leela stood and turned to face him, putting her hands on her hips. "Hey, now hold on a minute. This wasn't my fault. How was I supposed to know that purple alien moss is as explosive as darkmatter oil?"

The robot shrugged and a layer of ash that had accumulated on his shoulders cascaded to the ground. "Beats me. But Fry isn't here so we can't blame him, and we certainly aren't going to blame me, Bender. That leaves you or Amy, and since Amy's dying…" The bending robot trailed off.

"What?!" Leela grabbed the robot by what probably counted as his neck. "Why the hell didn't you say something?! Where is she?!"

Bender regarded his Captain for a full three picoseconds before his processor decided that the threat of bodily harm was high enough to activate his self-preservation program. His CPU immediately ceased running in its default 'wiseass' mode and executed an emergency 'whiny coward' subroutine. "Over there." He squeaked, and pointed in the direction of a small boulder.

Leela looked closer. _No, not a boulder. A body!_ "Amy!"

The PE Captain ran the few dozen meters to her fallen crewwoman and dropped down beside her. Amy was lying splayed out on her stomach. She wasn't moving. Leela grabbed hold of the right arm of the intern's charred spacesuit, meaning to roll her over. She was cut short by a piercing scream that came blasting in over the suit radio, followed by a string of rapid-fire Cantonese curses. The PE Captain let out a breath that she hadn't known she was holding.

"Amy, are you all right?" Leela asked.

The cursing died away. "Yeah, I think so." The intern said. "I must have been knocked unconscious when I hit the ground. I woke up when you yanked on my arm. It hurt like a-" The last word was in a language that Leela didn't speak. "I think my arm's broken."

"We'll get that patched up when we get back to the ship. Do you think you can stand?"

Amy nodded, and Leela helped her as she unsteadily got to her feet. At that moment Bender sauntered up to the group.

Leela looked at her two subordinates in turn. Amy was injured, in pain, and probably in shock. Bender was, well, Bender. Nothing ever seemed to affect him the way it ought to, emotionally or physically. Regardless, Leela knew that it was time for her to take charge.

"Alright. The first thing is to get back to the ship. Bender, when we're there I want you to get the ship ready for takeoff while I take care of Amy." She turned to the intern, her face set in the familiar look of command. "Amy, are you set to walk?"

The intern nodded.

"OK, good." Leela pressed some buttons on the computer that she wore on her wrist and squinted to see the dim screen. "According to my wristo-whatsit, the ship is that way." She pointed off over Bender's shoulder.

Bender made a grand show of stepping aside to let Leela pass. "Meatbags first" He said, gesturing.

Leela rolled her eye at the robot and started to march into the gloom. Her two companions followed close behind.

Without the moss to slow them down, it only took a few minutes to get back to the ship. The Planet Express Ship seemed to have been unaffected by the firestorm that had engulfed it a short while earlier. The purple moss that had covered it had all been reduced to a fine ash that settled around the vessel's landing skids. It's bright greens and reds stood out in sharp contrast to the grays and dark browns of the surrounding landscape. Leela had expected the ship to survive- it had been designed to handle the fires of re-entry, after all- but she still felt a wave of relief wash over her when the airlock light turned green and a hatch opened to welcome them aboard.

Leela removed her spacesuit and helped Amy out of hers. When Amy finally got a chance to look at her right arm, her face went green. The flesh was bruised and swollen, and the arm itself hung at an unnatural angle.

Bender's eyes zoomed in on the wound. "Neat!" He said, and began rummaging around in his chest cabinet. He first pulled out the package, which had managed to survive intact inside the robot's metal body. Making an irritated noise, Bender dropped the box and continued to dig for what he was looking for. His hand finally reappeared with a digital camera. He snapped a picture of Amy's broken arm and the camera disappeared back into his chest.

Leela bent down to examine the wound. "Don't worry." Leela said in her most reassuring voice. Straightening, she smiled at the intern and said "One of the Professor's nannite suppositories will fix that right up. I'll go get you one from sickbay."

Amy nodded, and Leela walked off into the depths of the ship. Bender, now bored, wandered toward the bridge, leaving Amy alone by the hatch. The intern leaned against the hull and waited, closing her eyes against the throbbing pain in her arm. Luckily, Leela was only gone for a minute or two.

"Amy?"

Upon opening her eyes, Amy discovered that Leela was standing right in front of her. The intern hadn't even heard her approach.

"Huh? Oh, right." With her left hand, Amy accepted the pill-shaped object that Leela held out to her. She knew, of course, that it wasn't a pill. The Professor didn't believe in them for some reason. "Thanks" she said.

"No problem." Leela assured her. "Meet me on the bridge when you're finished, uhh, taking your medicine. Ok?"

Amy winced, then nodded.

Leela had a few minutes to think while the nannites in Amy's blood healed her arm. While she paced up and down the length of the bridge, Bender sat on the couch and smoked a cigar, his boredom simulator executing an endless loop.

When Amy appeared, she was carrying the package under her right arm. Leela stopped pacing. "Feeling better?" She asked.

"Much better." Amy replied. She handed the package to Leela. "What are we going to do with this thing?" She asked.

Bender, sensing that he was in danger of being forced to do more work, spoke up before Leela had the chance to respond. "Easy. We toss it out the airlock and say we delivered it. Then we say the planet mysteriously caught on fire shortly after we left."

Leela looked troubled. "We just destroyed everything for as far as the eye can see. There might be animals- or even people- out there that are injured and need our help."

"I don't know, Leela." Amy replied. "We walked all around and didn't see any people, and the only animal, or well, whatever it was, that we saw was that moss stuff."

"Yeah, and the longer we stick around here feeling sorry for the furry animals that Leela probably just brutally murdered-" The look that Leela aimed at the robot would have killed most organic life. " –the more likely it is that somebody will show up and put our asses in prison. There's only one sensible thing to do." He paused for dramatic effect. "Cheese it!"

It didn't feel right to just leave, or, for that matter, to listen to Bender's advice, but the truth was that the planet had seemed deserted, and there was little chance of finding anyone or anything that needed help in the smoke-clogged plain. Leela reached a decision.

"Alright. Let's get out of here." Promising herself that she would notify the DOOP of the accident when she got home, the PE Captain sat down in her chair and began to power up the ship. The engines throttled up smoothly, and Leela put the ship into gear and pushed the throttle forward. There was a mighty roar as the dark matter engines came to life, and the PE Ship… didn't go anywhere.

"What the hell?" Leela checked her instruments. Everything looked nominal. More confused than worried, the PE Captain shoved the throttle up all the way. The spaceship began to vibrate somewhat, but still remained anchored to the ground. Leela cursed.

"Uhh, Leela?" Amy called from tactical.

"Just a moment, Amy." Leela replied distractedly.

But the intern was insistent, "Leela, I think you should see this."

Leela finally caught the worry in the intern's voice. She looked up from her console and saw that Amy was looking at something through the side viewport. After throttling down and putting the ship back in neutral, Leela got up from her chair and went to stand next to the intern. There was an enormous, white spaceship descending overhead.

There was a hiss of static. Leela turned to see an image of a young man dressed in a smart-looking grey uniform glaring at her from a video screen. The PE Captain recognized the lanky, balding figure immediately.

"Who's in command?" The face demanded.

"I am." Leela addressed the monitor. "My name is Turanga Leela, Captain of the Planet Express delivery ship." She paused, giving herself time to plan her next words. "We were involved in an accident, and we are having trouble with our engines. We could use some assistance"

"Ah yes, Captain Leela. I remember you from that whole affair with the robots. My name is Walt, but you already know that. There is nothing wrong with your engines; your ship is just caught in my suck ray. Your vessel is being confiscated, and you are all now property of Momcorp, Ltd." Walt broke the connection.

Leela blinked a couple of times while the meaning of Walt's last words sank into her head. The groan of protesting metal resounded through the PE Ship, and the ground began to slowly recede from the viewports.

The PE Captain dashed for her console and threw the ship into gear, pushing the throttle to emergency thrust. The ship began to shake violently as its engines fought the invisible grasp of the suck ray. It was no use. As Leela made a valiant, but futile, attempt to wrench her ship free, the suck beam drew it steadily toward the mammoth vessel overhead. An opening appeared in the larger ship's underside like a mouth, and the PE Ship was swallowed whole. 

"Alright. We're coming out. Nobody shoot." Leela took a hesitant step down the ship's embarkation ladder. She stopped for a moment and made a show of putting her hands on her head.

The PE Ship had been pulled through some kind of force field and deposited none too gently on the floor of a cavernous hangar bay. Leela's eyes swept the compartment. The deck and bulkheads were painted in a crisp white, and the deck was separated into a grid pattern of crisscrossing strips of red, reflective tape. In this manner, the hangar was divided into a six by ten matrix of squares- each approximately 10 meters on a side- so that the hangar harbored a passing resemblance to a tiled floor. Each tile was a parking space, and stubby ships of some sort occupied about half of them. From what Leela could tell, the ships looked slow but heavily armored; they practically bristled with weaponry. There were two dozen or so heavily armed security personnel surrounding the PE Ship. The barrels of two laser turrets glistened in the glare of the harsh overhead lights.

A hatch opened at the far end of the hangar, and three uniformed figures began to stride purposefully in Leela's direction. The PE Captain recognized them as Walt and his two brothers, whose names she had forgotten.

Walt broke through the circle of guards and strode to the bottom of the Planet Express Ship's ramp. Clasping his arms behind his back, he waited for Leela to descend. The PE Captain signaled for Amy and Bender to emerge from the relative safety of the airlock, and, letting her arms drop to her sides, she began to walk casually down the ramp, hoping to appear a bit more confident than she felt.

When the PE crew had descended to the hangar deck, Walt finally spoke. "Captain Leela." He said. "You are under arrest for trespassing on private property, arson, destruction of property, and attempting to flee the scene of a crime. Now hand over the package." He gestured to the box that Amy had, for some reason, thought it necessary to take with her when she left the ship.

Amy meekly handed over the package, but Leela just crossed her arms. "Uh huh." The PE Captain said, not buying a word of it. "And where exactly is it written that you have the authority to arrest people?"

Walt and his red-haired brother started to laugh. _Larry. That was his name._ Leela remembered. _And the other one is Ignar._

"What's so funny?" Leela demanded.

"Money. Money gives us the authority to do whatever we want." Walter answered.

Larry added: "That's right. If we want something, we buy it. If we can't buy it, we steal it."

"And if we get caught," Walt continued, smiling wickedly, "we just buy a judge or two, and the problem goes away." His expression changed, and there was suddenly anger in his voice. "Now march!" He ordered, pointing toward a nearby hatch. With two dozen plasma rifles leveled at them, the PE Crew didn't have much of a choice but to obey.

Amy, Bender and Leela were led through a maze of twisting corridors and turbolifts until they came to a compartment that was obviously a brig. The far end of the room was divided into three smaller rooms, each of which had no door. One of their guards motioned with his plasma rifle for the PE Crew to walk into one of the compartments. When they were inside, the guard hit a button on a small control panel and a transluscent yellow force field sprang into existence, sealing the PE Crew inside.

Walt stepped up to the force field. Leela turned to face him. As she stood there, arms crossed, eye narrowed in defiance, she couldn't help but think he looked like a giant rat.

"You won't get away with this." Leela said.

Walt frowned at the threatening note in his adversary's voice. "We'll see who gets away with what." He said in a cool voice. "Now tell me, who hired you to sabotage the nursery?"

Leela blinked once, confused. She and Amy exchanged glances. Bender just stood in the corner, his system on standby, waiting for Leela to do the whole obligatory ass-kicking routine so he could get on with important Bender-related business.

"What do you mean, nursery?" Leela asked cautiously, not sure whether she should be giving away her ignorance.

"Don't give me that!" Walt snapped. "You know what this planet is, and what the dangers were when you accepted the mission. The unprocessed Moss is only explosive when it is brought into contact with alcohol, and only then when there's a strong heat source to act as a catalyst. We warned you about this when we hired you, so there's no way that you managed to accidentally-"

"Wait, _you_ hired us?" Amy interjected. "Doesn't Momcorp have its own delivery service?"

Walt gave the intern an annoyed look. "Well, yes, mother does own her own delivery company, but the employees kept committing suicide rather than go on a delivery to Cardena."

"Cardena?" Amy asked.

Walt stared blankly at the Martian for a moment. "That's the name of this planet." He said, obviously confused as to how someone who had just made a delivery to a planet could fail to know its name.

"Let me guess," Leela broke in, "Mom's employees didn't like the idea of taking a package to a planet inhabited by carnivorous moss."

Walt chuckled mirthlessly. "No, they didn't, so I decided to try another delivery company. The old man I talked to over the videophone said that you would deliver anywhere, regardless of how suicidal it might be, so I paid you to ship the package for me."

Leela rolled her eye. _Thank you, Professor Farnsworth, she thought sarcastically._

"So, what was in the package, anyway?" Bender asked.

"A transmitter." Walt replied, retrieving the box from one of the guards that flanked him. "You were supposed to land at the coordinates I gave the old man, take the transmitter out of the package, and deploy it right next to your ship."

Opening the package, Walt removed the tiny transmitter, which had miraculously survived unscathed. The device was shaped somewhat like a can of Slurm mounted on a tiny tripod. When Walt pressed a button on the transmitter's surface, a gossamer-thin antenna emerged from the top of the device and telescoped outward. The transmitter began to chirp, and to Leela's surprise, the screen on her wrist computer began to flash red.

"The transmitter was supposed to broadcast a warning on all frequencies to any ship entering the Cardenian System." Walt explained.

As if on cue, a friendly, synthetic, female voice began to speak out of Leela's wrist computer. "Warning." The voice advised. "You are now entering private space. Trespassers will be 'disappeared'." There was a few seconds of silence for the meaning of the message to sink in, and then the transmission began to repeat. Walt pressed another button on the transmitter, and the voice fell silent. Leela's wrist computer switched itself off.

When the transmitter was shut down, Walt turned back to Leela and pointed his finger at her accusingly. "The idea was for you to activate the transmitter and then leave before the Moss started to wonder whether you were edible, or stick around long enough to get eaten. It didn't really matter. But now the entire crop is destroyed! You've cost Momcorp trillions of dollars in profit!"

Amy and Leela winced. "Uhh, sorry?" Leela offered. Bender, bored again, decided to stop paying attention until the violence started.

"I'm afraid an apology isn't good enough." Walt said. "Moss is the number one ingredient in 237 products that Momcorp sells. Clothing, mattresses, insulation, paint… It's even the number one ingredient in crappy foods like Bachelor Chow. It can pretty much be used for anything, once it's processed so that it isn't explosive. Without this year's crop, Momcorp might have to use sawdust instead, and do you have any idea how much more expensive that is?!"

"But we didn't mean to destroy the crop." Amy protested. "It tried to eat us, and we accidentally blew it up while we were trying to get away."

Surprisingly, Walt shrugged. "Maybe it was an accident. It doesn't really matter. Either way, you'll all spend the rest of your lives working for Momcorp to repay the company for the damage that you've done."

Amy's jaw opened wide, and Bender gasped. Leela just glared. "You won't get away with this." The PE Captain said. "I'll break us out of here sooner or later, and when I do, I'm going to kick your ass all the way to Andromeda."

Walt laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that. Actually, I'm fairly sure you'll cooperate." He gestured for one of his guards to bring him something. Four other guards, armed with what looked like stun rays, took up position right in front of the forcefield. Walt took three metal discs, roughly the size of cufflinks, from the first guard. He held them up for the PE Crew to see. "These nasty little devices," he explained, "are neural suggesters. They will implant themselves in your skulls and attach themselves to your brains with tiny electrodes. Using this controller here-" He pulled a small remote out of his shirt pocket. "-will allow me to effectively control your minds."

Leela and Amy were speechless. The color had drained from both of their faces. Bender, on the other hand, wasn't as impressed. "Pfft. Yeah, right. Like you're actually going to control my brain with that little tiny thing. You're full of crap, chump."

Walt's grin sent a shiver down Leela's spine. "Oh, it works, I assure you. Here, let me demonstrate." He gestured to a guard that was beyond Leela's field of view, and the force field disappeared. The guards with the stunners opened fire before Leela had time to react. The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was lying on her back, staring up at Walt as he knelt over her, one of the metal discs gleaming menacingly in his hand.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part Three: New New York, July 14****th****, 3002**

As Fry navigated the streets of New New York, he couldn't help but admire the fantastic architecture that sprang up around him on all sides. He had always loved the skyscrapers of the old city, especially the majestic peak of the Empire State building, but even that old testament to the industriousness of the 1920s couldn't compare to the towering structures of the new city. In the midst of the smaller rectangular buildings rose pyramids and cylinders of glass and plascrete, some stretching high enough that they pierced the underbellies of the thunderheads that were slowly building to the southwest. The lower levels shone a brilliant yellow as their countless windows reflected the evening sun.

Autopiloted vehicles of every size, shape, and description flitted between and above the skyscrapers at would have been suicidal speeds for their human drivers. It was easy for Fry to get lost in the spectacle, and he often found himself standing in the middle of the sidewalk, gawping at the scenery while the current of pedestrians parted itself and flowed around him. But not today. Today he had somewhere to be.

He was supposed to be meeting Chelsea for dinner and a movie in two hours. That gave him just enough time to get home, shower, and change before he had to head for the park where they were planning to meet. He was tempted to skip the shower and the change of clothes, but his admittedly limited experience told him that, for some reason he'd never quite figured out, women actually _care_ if you smell bad.

Fry almost missed the turn onto his street. He couldn't help but chuckle at that. It had been, what, ten weeks since he'd left Robot Arms, and he still found himself automatically walking home in that direction. Turning the corner, he passed what had been Amy Wong's favorite store. A sign over the doorway proudly proclaimed it to be the "Bra Market" **see note at bottom of page **. Fry didn't know what was to be found behind its convex, tinted windows, but for some reason he found himself unable to resist peering in the doorway as he passed by.

Two hours and twenty minutes later, Fry was running pell-mell down the street, shirttails billowing in the breeze, belt undone, and hair in disarray. Startled pedestrians stared wide-eyed as the redhead clumsily dodged between them.

"Excuse me! Pardon me!" He yelled as he barreled through a crowd of stocky, crablike Haniir tourists who were waiting for their bus. One of the Haniir raised his trunk and bellowed back something indecipherable; Fry assumed it was an insult. It was unfortunate that Fry didn't speak hanii, for if he had, he would have known that what the blue alien had actually said was "Excuse me sir, but I can see your hindmouth."

By the time Fry finally made it to the little grassy patch that was generously referred to as a park, he was panting and sweaty. He looked around frantically, but Chelsea was nowhere to be seen. He felt a stab of panic. Had she gone home already, thinking that he'd stood her up?

"Damn it! Why did I have to turn on the TV while I was at home changing?!" The new spin-off of All My Circuits, Battlestar Calculon, had drawn him in so thoroughly with the revelation that Monique was actually one of the Final Cylons that he had completely lost track of time.

But then, to Fry's infinite relief, he spotted Chelsea rounding a corner in the distance. She was running flat out, an impressive feat considering she was wearing heels. Fry leaned against a nearby lamppost and caught his breath while Chelsea easily threaded her way through the crowd. The minute or so that Fry had to wait would have been an opportune time to fix his hair, tuck in his shirt, and pull his pants up to their proper height, but he found himself unable to resist watching Chelsea dodge between, under, and around the members of the crowd with a skill that might even have rivaled the PE Captain's. Fry noted that Chelsea was taking pains to avoid the aliens that were mixed in with the crowd. It didn't surprise him, really. She was still adapting to the bizarre newness of the future. She was having a harder time getting used to the 31st century than he had, but she'd come around eventually.

Although she was undoubtedly of Asian descent, Chelsea was an inch or two taller than him and had striking brown, almond shaped eyes that contrasted starkly with her obsidian black hair. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that flopped against her back as she ran. She was wearing a dress of what Fry's vocabulary could only describe as reddish-purplish that flowed gracefully around her lithe figure. Fry thought she looked absolutely stunning, almost as beautiful as Le- He crushed the thought before he could finish it.

Chelsea stopped a couple of feet from Fry and smiled guiltily. "Sorry I'm so late." She said, not even slightly winded. "I made the mistake of turning on the TV while I was getting ready. Did you know that Monique-"

"Is a Cylon? I know, isn't it awesome?!" Fry grinned. "I got sucked into the show too. I only got here a minute ago." Suddenly remembering his appearance, he turned away and stuffed his shirt into his khakis. Fastening his belt, he turned back around. At the questioning look in Chelsea's face Fry smiled weakly. "I uhh, sorta forgot to finish getting ready when I realized I was late." The redhead waited for Chelsea to roll her eye- err- eyes. He was a little startled when she just shrugged.

"Whatever. No big deal." She looked at her watch. "Hey, we need to get walking. We're supposed to be at the movie theatre in, uhh, _now_. Crap, we'll never make it there before the previews are over."

Fry hesitated for a second. They were a mile from the theater. She was right; they wouldn't make it in time. Unless… He spoke up, somewhat carefully. "You know, there is another way." He glanced at a nearby tube station to demonstrate his point.

Chelsea blanched. "Oh no. You're not suggesting we… Oh God. You know I hate those things."

Fry took her arm. "Yeah, I know you do, but it's the only way we'll get there in time. Besides, you'll never conquer your fear unless you face it head on."

Chelsea regarded him skeptically. "Who told you that? It was that Leela person you're always talking about, wasn't it?"

A little embarrassed, Fry admitted it. "Yeah, I guess it was. She said that when she was trying to get me to get over my fear of brain slugs."

"Brain slugs?" Chelsea asked, her tone making it obvious that she knew that she didn't want to know the answer.

"Uhh, little green blobby things that- umm, never mind."

Chelsea reluctantly allowed herself to be pulled toward the transport tube. She looked at the tube's clear flanks with a mix of distaste and suspicion. The day she'd been unfrozen she had been wandering through the city, just walking and marveling at the sights, when she'd innocently walked into a tube entrance, curious. She'd seen the clear tubes snaking all over the city, but since it had been midday and tube traffic was light, there was no one flying overhead to demonstrate what the things were used for. When she'd entered the base of the tube, she'd immediately had the sensation that she'd been closed in. She turned to leave and came up hard against an invisible barrier of some kind that blocked the entrance. More annoyed than scared, she'd pounded at the whatever-it-was that had trapped her, hurtling obscenities at it in vain. Unfortunately, the nanocomputer mounted in the tube wall somehow misinterpreted her words as a destination command, and before she'd had time to react she was careening through the air. She'd felt like a bullet being accelerated endlessly down the barrel of a gun.

Fry gave the reluctant woman's arm a soft tug. "Come on, Chelsea. It's just like riding in an elevator, only faster… and higher… and without the elevator car or anything to hold you up-"

"Stop!" Chelsea blurted, clamping a hand over the clueless redhead's overactive mouth. "Let's just get this over with, alright?" With that, she stepped into the empty tube and turned around. She crossed her arms. "You owe me for this." She said, dead serious. Then, wincing, she said aloud to the computer that was listening in, "Googleplex theatres." A moment later there was a puff of air and Chelsea disappeared into the sky with a whump of suction.

* * *

"Man that movie was _terrible_."

Fry nodded his agreement. He and Chelsea were walking side by side, letting themselves be pushed toward the lobby by the crowd of moviegoers. Theatres hadn't changed much in a thousand years. They were still dark, dirty, and smelled of old popcorn and floor cleaner. The only significant difference was the addition of spilled motor oil to the conglomeration of popcorn, soda, candy, and who knows what else that covered the floor. The addition was not an improvement, as it somehow bonded with the other detritus into a substance analogous to superglue. When the movie was over, Fry tried to get up from the tattered stadium seat, only to discover that his feet were glued solidly to the floor. Chelsea had had to kick him free.

"Yeah, that sucked. I forgot that most records of the past got destroyed."

"I thought a documentary of the 20th and 21st centuries would be good for us. It'd be like going back in time for a few hours. Plus, I really wanted to know what happened after I got frozen. But everything was wrong!"

Fry caught the disappointment in Chelsea's voice and frowned. He wanted her to be happy, and although she'd picked the movie, he felt a little responsible for not realizing what was going to happen. "It's ok." He said lamely and then fumbled for something comforting to add.

"I mean, a robot with a plasma cannon screwing up the 2000 presidential election? What the hell? And since when were the Backstreet Boys the leading philosophers of the 21st century?"

Fry giggled, despite himself. "Yeah. And as if Hillary Clinton raised an army of cyborgs and took over the planet in 2012."

Chelsea hesitated for a moment. "Well actually," she said slowly, "that is somewhat true. There really was an army of cyborgs that tried to conquer the planet in 2012. They almost succeeded too, but their momentum started to falter after they took over the western hemisphere. Clinton was on the human side, though."

"Hey, that's right!" Fry exclaimed. "You were _there_ in the 21st century. Well, for the first 12 years anyway. You should write to the movie's producers and tell them what really happened." When Chelsea shrugged noncommittally, he added, "So, what was the war about, anyway?"

Chelsea stopped walking abruptly. When he didn't immediately stop as well, she lightly grabbed his arm. Surprised, the redhead turned to face her.

"Is something wrong?" He asked, afraid that he'd made some terrible blunder. But there was no anger on Chelsea's face. It was studiously blank, as if in the blink of the eye she had put on a mask. The only hint of emotion that Fry could find was buried in the backs of her eyes, something buried just a little too deep for him to read.

When Chelsea spoke her words came out very carefully. "Fry, the war was a tragic part of my life that I would really like to forget. I was frozen a few months after it started, but during those few months my entire life unraveled. I saw friends and colleagues brutally slaughtered. So please understand, the war is a painful subject for me, ok?" Then, to Fry's bewilderment, the mask was gone and there was a smile on Chelsea's face again. "Now, let's go get something to eat."

Before Fry could react, Chelsea, who still had a light grip on his left arm, began gently pulling him along behind her as she forced a path for them through the gaggle of moviegoers.

* * *

The night air was hot and entirely still. Fry hated the end of July in New New York as much as he'd hated it in Old New York. After a full day of baking in the summer sun, the pavement released its heat into an atmosphere so saturated with water that a person seemed liable to drown. By the time he and Chelsea had worked their way through the brightly lit streets to the restaurant, Fry could feel the sweat trickling down his face in little rivulets

As they approached Elzar's, Fry suddenly remembered his sense of chivalry. He jogged up ahead a couple of steps and pulled open the door. When he looked back at his date, she smiled at him, and Fry burst into a big grin.

Fry and Chelsea crossed the threshold and entered the restaurant, and a little bell tinkled as the door closed behind them. As if on cue, a purple, four-armed alien came bursting into the room.

"Hi kids. Welcome to Elzar's" The owner and head chef greeted them in his distinct Neptunian accent. "Table for two?"

"Yes, please." Fry responded, nodding

"Alright then. Follow me." The Neptunian led them through the densely packed restaurant to a table near the rear of the establishment. Chelsea sat down facing the door, and Fry sat down across from her. Elzar handed them each a menu. Before leaving to attend to another group that had just arrived, he recommended that they order the special of the day. "What I do is mash together all of the food that didn't get eaten yesterday." He said before turning to leave.

Chelsea regarded Fry uneasily. "Is he serious?" She asked.

Fry chuckled. "Who, Elzar?" He waved dismissively. "Nah, don't pay attention to him; he always makes jokes like that. This one time he even said he forgot to cook the chicken I ordered. Actually, come to think of it, that was only a few hours before I got that really awful flu I was telling you about."

"Uh-huh." Chelsea replied, not particularly convinced.

Elzar returned a few minutes later to take their orders and then vanished into the kitchen with a flourish. He returned an hour later with their meals. Fry and Chelsea chatted while they ate, first about their jobs and then about the future in general. The computer at Applied Cryogenics had come to the decision that "security guard" was the career to which Chelsea was most suited. Momcorp had been at the top of the list of suggested employers. Chelsea had applied electronically and been hired before she even left Fry's office.

Chelsea was eager to share her experiences since she had been unfrozen, but her whole demeanor changed abruptly when Fry innocently asked about her childhood. She didn't object to the question, but gave him a hasty, disjointed answer, as if it was uncomfortable even to think about it. Sensing his mistake, Fry tried to change the subject, but the energy that Chelsea had exhibited five minutes earlier was gone.

A few awkward minutes passed in silence before Fry found the courage to speak. "You ok?" Fry asked.

"Hmm, what?" Chelsea asked, startled.

Fry frowned slightly. "Are you alright? You haven't said anything in like twenty minutes. You've been just nibblin' at that salad and staring into space."

Noticing the worried look on Fry's face, she reached out and squeezed his hand. "Don't worry." She reassured him. "I'm alright. You haven't done anything wrong. This has been a great night for me. I'm just thinking about… something."

There was another minute of silence, but this time it lacked the awkwardness. Fry finished off the last of his meal as he waited for Chelsea to work through whatever was bothering her. When she finally spoke, it was with a single word. "Religion." She said.

Fry looked up at her. "Huh?"

"Religion and betrayal. That's what the war was about."

The redhead put down his fork. "Are you sure you want to talk about this?" He asked.

Chelsea shook her head. "Nope. But its probably good for me to talk about it with somebody, and well, if I'm going to talk to somebody about it, I kinda feel like it should be you." For the first time ever, Fry saw some vulnerability tug at the corners of Chelsea's face.

A littler perplexed, and very touched, the redhead waited for her to continue. "It all started in a town called Los Alamos." She began. "There was a group of people who believed that human life, even though it was the only form of life to contain a soul, was illogical, and therefore flawed. Machine life, on the other hand, was innately logical, but had no soul. The group believed that the perfect form of life was a combination of human and machine- a cyborg that could take advantage of the strengths of both groups, but was limited by the disadvantages of neither. Their leader, a brilliant robotics expert working for the United States government, developed the technology to turn people into cyborgs, even against their will. The scientist's wife discovered what he was planning and reported him to the feds. He was assassinated by some shadowy government agency, but one of his children secretly continued his research. One day, just a few months before I was frozen, the cyborg cult, as they were called, came out of hiding. They enslaved or assimilated town after town, adding armies of drones to their ranks. It was only a few months before the military had been pushed all the way back to the East Coast. When the cyborgs finally invaded New York, the fighting was _savage_. Everyone fought. Men, women, children who were old enough to pick up a rifle. So many deaths…" Chelsea trailed off as tears came to her eyes, but she managed to gain control over her emotions. "Eventually they took over the entire western hemisphere; only patches of the American northwest and Nova Scotia were free. Millions of people died fighting the cyborgs, and millions more died when they were converted to mindless drones and forced to fight their former comrades."

Fry listened to all of this in silence. The words that Chelsea was speaking didn't scare him nearly as much as the sorrow and latent terror that laced each word. He tried to picture what Chelsea must have seen during those few months. He shuddered. "W- what happened next?" He asked, hesitantly.

"The cyborgs began to stall." Chelsea said. "While they had been busy conquering the Americas, Europe had been preparing for them. EMP weapons were mass-produced. There was no way for the cyborgs to cross the ocean without being crushed by the combined fleets of the exiled American government, the European Union, Russia, and China. Then an organized resistance group broke out in the conquered territories, and that bogged the cyborgs down even more. The UN counterattacked and liberated the East Coast of the United States after a long, bloody trench war, but I wasn't there for that. I froze myself right before the invasion of New York. Everyone thought the war would be over by then, one way or the other."

"But what if, you know, the good guys didn't win?" Fry asked. "If the freezer tube hadn't malfunctioned, you would've woken up to…" The prospects made his blood run cold.

Chelsea seemed to have to think about it for a second. "I told myself that, whatever happened, it would be better than having to live through all those years of war. My family was dead by then- almost everyone I knew was dead. I couldn't watch people killing each other anymore."

That seemed to make sense. "Did you ever find out what else happened after you were frozen?" Fry asked.

"Yeah. I did some research after I thawed out. Like you said, most of the records from back then are gone, but it looks like the UN managed to beat the cyborgs with their electromagnetic pulse technology."

"What did they do with those cyborg cult people?"

Chelsea frowned. "Most of them died in the war. The others that didn't go into hiding were executed, I think."

Just as Fry was about to say something comforting, he heard a familiar voice calling to him from somewhere over his shoulder. "Fry, mon! Is dat you?!"

Fry's face turned white. He began fervently trying to make himself as small as possible.

"By Jah, I'd know that hair anywhere!" The voice said a moment later, this time much closer. A thick Jamaican hand landed on Fry's left shoulder.

The redhead winced. "Hi Hermes."

* * *

**NOTE: This was supposed to be an obscure play on ****bra-ket (Dirac) notation of Hilbert vector spaces in quantum mechanics. seems to be unable to accept the special characters I needed to form the vectors, but the joke composed of a bra vector and a ket vector with an operator sandwhiched in between. The operator was a capital M with subscript ar, making it read bra-mar-ket. Pretty weak, huh?**


	6. Chapter 6

With dread pulling at his stomach like a lead weight, Fry twisted in his chair to face the bureaucrat

With dread pulling at his stomach like a lead weight, Fry twisted in his chair to face the bureaucrat. The Jamaican's broad face was grinning back at him in the manner usually reserved for unexpected letters from the DMV. His wife Labarbara and his son Dwight stood at his side. Both of them returned Fry's gaze with blank looks, as if they hadn't realized yet that he was there. Fry could see Professor Farnsworth maneuvering his arthritic frame through the maze of tables in the background. His son Cubert, obviously frustrated by the shuffling old man, detoured around a couple of Thurians who were noisily devouring a heaping pile of mustard and olives, and, in a few quick strides, crossed the room to stand next to Dwight. The pudgy 11 year old regarded Fry and Chelsea, and then gave Fry a skeptical look. Fry swept the room with his eyes, but he didn't see any signs of Leela or Bender. Or Amy for that matter. The weight in his stomach eased somewhat.

"Fry mon!" Hermes continued. "It's great to see you! Where in Babylon 'ave you been all dis time?!" There was a beat as the Jamaican noticed Chelsea, seemingly for the first time. "And who might dis be?"

Fry found himself completely caught off balance. He fumbled for something to say, but had no idea how to react. Should he treat Hermes as the casual acquaintance that he had been back when Fry had been a delivery boy, the coldhearted bureaucrat that had fired him, or the long lost friend that he had never been, but that, if his current enthusiasm was to be believed, Hermes seemed to think he was? Fry was aware that he had to say _something_, and do it before the silence became strained. A few confused words escaped Fry's lips, but his brain was unable to come out with anything even remotely coherent.

Luckily, Chelsea came to his rescue. "Hermes, is it?" She asked pleasantly, and extended her hand. "My name's Chelsea. Chelsea Porter." The Jamaican's beefy paw engulfed her hand, but when they shook, it was Chelsea, not Hermes, who had the stronger grip. The bureaucrat, surprised, withdrew his hand.

"Nice to meet you." Hermes said, then gestured for his party to settle around an adjacent table. Hermes lowered himself into a chair and twisted around so that he could continue the conversation.

"So Fry, where 'ave you been all 'dis time? I haven't seen you in weeks."

Fry stared at the bureaucrat for a moment. _What the heck is going on here?_ "Uh, Hermes, don't take this the wrong way, but why are you being so nice to me? I mean, the last time we talked was when you fired me for- well, you know."

Instead of getting offended, which is what Fry had expected him to do, the Jamaican just chuckled and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. _Ok, this is __**too**__ friendly. _Fry told himself._ Something's up._ Self-preservation instincts, dormant after months of safety at Applied Cryogenics, suddenly kicked into high gear.

Fry noticed the somewhat heavy expressions on the faces of Labarbara, Dwight, and even Cubert. Only the Professor seemed his normal self, although, since the scientist had fallen asleep in his chair, it was somewhat hard to tell. _Where are Leela, Bender, and Amy?_

At that moment, Zoidberg, having been feasting upon the delicious leavings in Elzar's dumpster, waddled into the restaurant. Elzar moved to intercept him, but the Decapodian made a beeline for his coworkers. Satisfied that the creature was part of the Planet Express party, Elzar returned to the kitchen.

Warbling softly to himself, Zoidberg squeezed his way between Chelsea and Hermes and sat down next to the Professor. As the Decapodian lowered himself into his seat, he gripped the back of Chelsea's seat with a garbage-streaked claw for balance. In the process, the claw almost came into contact with Chelsea's hair. Chelsea jerked away and glared at the alien. For a moment, Fry thought she might say something, but she seemed to catch herself.

Zoidberg didn't notice Chelsea at all, but upon recognizing Fry, let out a squeal of joy. "Fry! Good to see you, it is!"

After acknowledging the Decapodian with a quick "Hi, Zoidberg", Fry proceeded to follow the Planet Express employees' example of pretending Zoidberg wasn't even there. Turning back to Hermes, Fry asked "How's business?"

Hermes was caught slightly off guard. "Oh. Uh, business is fine." He said. "In fact, it's running so well dat I took the whole company out to dinner to celebrate. We've been doin' so much business dat I just stamped my ten millionth form dis morning!"

Labarbara, who had until this point been silent and detached, broke into the conversation. "Husband, stop playing games with 'da poor boy." She said, giving Hermes a reproachful look. "Your ten millionth form was a letter to notify 'de Central Bureaucracy dat three of your employees are missing." Turning to Fry, she continued. "I'm sorry Phillip, but three of your friends- 'da cyclops, 'da robot, and 'dat Martian girl- are missing."

Fry felt his heart skip a beat. He blinked twice, surprised by his own reaction. "Missing?" He asked.

Hermes frowned at his wife, then turned back to Fry. "Yes, I'm afraid so." He acknowledged, with a slow nod. "Dey went out on a delivery and never came back. We never even got a distress call." The bureaucrat sighed, and then shook his head sadly. "We lose more crews dat way… It is a huge loss for 'da company."

Wondering if the loss to which Hermes referred was the lives of his employees or the expensive intergalactic spaceship, and then deciding he really didn't want to know, Fry asked: "How long have they been missing?"

"Five weeks." Labarbara said.

The odds that they were alive weren't very good, then. "Did you put up 'missing' signs? Back in the 20th century, my friend's cat ran away, so he put signs on all of the telephone poles."

"Did it work?" asked Dwight.

"Yeah. Well, I mean, it turned out the cat wasn't really missing. It was just locked in my friend's closet, so I guess the signs didn't help at all. But still-"

"No, we didn't put up any signs." Hermes said, cutting Fry off. "We don't have any idea what happened to dem, or where dey are." He admitted. Strangely, there was a hint of embarrassment, or possibly even shame in his voice. The Jamaican glanced at his wife as if for support, but Labarbara crossed her arms and pointedly looked away.

Fry sighed. "You didn't even look. Did you?"

Hermes spread his arms. "How were we supposed to mount a rescue mission?" He asked. "We couldn't use a spaceship to go look for dem; the only spaceship we had was missing!"

"You could have rented a ship, or hired someone to go look." Fry replied. "Or put up posters."

"Ah, but dat would 'ave been _expensive_." Hermes replied with confidence, as if that somehow proved a point. "It makes more business sense to fill out missing persons notices and hire a new crew."

"What about the Wongs?" Fry pointed out, anger starting to build in his chest. "They have, like, gazillions of dollars to spend on looking for Amy."

Before Fry had finished speaking, Hermes was already shaking his head. It looked as though he'd heard the argument before. "I can't tell dem that Amy is missing until I receive permission from de Central Bureaucracy. But don't worry. Dey'll get back to me within a few months." There was a beat. "Oh, by 'da way." Hermes added, his overly-friendly demeanor suddenly back in full swing. "We happen to be hiring a new crew, and we have an opening for a new delivery boy. Since you already 'ave da training, and if things aren't working out at the cryogenics lab, maybe you could-"

Hermes never got to finish that statement. Fry exploded out of his seat. There was a clatter of dishes as his knee crashed into the underside of the table. His chair tumbled backwards and hit the floor with a thud. Chelsea was startled by the sudden noise. In a single fluid motion she was out of her seat and in a defensive position. When her brain caught up with her instincts a moment later, she hesitated and looked about her uncertainly.

"How can you say that?!" Fry was yelling, surprised at himself, and at the intensity of his emotion. "Leela, Bender, and Amy are _people_. You can't just let them die because of regulations and business expenses!" The ex-delivery boy's hands were shaking with the force of his emotion. "And then you actually offer me my job because you need a _replacement_ for them?! They're- were- my friends!"

Fry looked away from Hermes and shook his head in a combination of disbelief and disgust. For a split second his eyes met Chelsea's, and some kind of nonverbal communication passed between them. One of Chelsea's hands lay casually at her hip by a slight bulge that he had not noticed before. Her left eyebrow was raised slightly. Something in Fry's expression must have sufficed as an answer, because Chelsea's hand moved away from the bulge, almost reluctantly.

"B- But I thought you would _want_ your job back." Hermes stammered, confused. The other restaurant patrons, curious about all of the commotion, had been listening to the conversation. The bureaucrat noticed uncomfortably that many of them were favoring him with hostile looks. Obviously he had said something wrong, but all of the resources of his bureaucratic mind were unable to figure out what it was. He looked to his wife for support, but all he got in return was a silent "serves you right".

"I did." Fry replied to Hermes' question. "But not like this. I can't take back my old job, knowing that I'm replacing somebody that used to mean a lot to me. Not when you aren't going to look for them if you can find new employees instead. It would be like I was helping to kill them or something."

At that moment, Elzar came storming out of the kitchen "Hey, what's going on here?" The Neptunian demanded, all four arms on his hips. "Is there a problem?"

Fry was about to explain the situation when Chelsea leaned across the disheveled table and touched his arm to silence him. Regarding the Neptunian with distaste, Chelsea said. "No problem. We were just on our way out." She reached into her purse, pulled out enough bills to cover both of their dinners, and tossed them onto the table. Walking around Fry's fallen chair, she put a hand on the redhead's shoulder and began to steer him towards the door. Fry tried to object, but Chelsea was insistent, and he let himself be led away. At the last moment, Labarbara reached out and grabbed the hem of Fry's shirt. "Hold on a second, boy." She said. "You should know. The name of da planet they went to was Cardena." With that, she smiled, let go, and turned away.

* * *

As Fry and Chelsea walked down a narrow side street a few blocks from Elzar's, Fry could feel the anger building inside him. "Can you _believe_ all that?" He was saying. "All that 'Hi Fry, nice to see you again' crap. He just wanted to take advantage of me." The redhead sighed. "I guess nothing changes."

Chelsea didn't answer right away. The two of them were alone on the cracked sidewalk. The rain had stopped some time ago, though a thick dampness still hung in the air. A distant rumble of thunder rolled in over their heads. The street was only sparsely lit by the soft, orange glow of the streetlights, which were further dimmed by a thick mist that was rising off the pavement. When Chelsea finally spoke, it was in a guarded voice. Fry tried to read the expression on her face, but they had passed into the shadow between the street lamps, and he could only make out her silhouette.

"Fry, sometimes people say or do things that other people misunderstand, not because they're cruel, or evil, but because they believe it is _right_. Even when they're wrong, it's not always right to hate them. They can't help what they're doing; they don't know any better."

"I don't hate-" She held up her hand to silence him. "I know you don't, and I agree with you that Hermes was wrong to put you in that position. It was a dirty trick to try and maneuver you into returning to Planet Express as a replacement for your old friends, but what else would you expect from someone that associates with aliens? Remember that, whether or not he actually was wrong, he didn't know it, and he didn't mean it."

"Yeah I know." Fry said, unconvinced. Then, frowning he added: "Wait, what about ali-?"

But Chelsea was speaking again. "Back in the 21st century there was someone who was very close to me that did something… unforgivable. It took me years to understand that she betrayed me, not because she was cruel, but because she was too ignorant to understand what she had done. I didn't hate her; I wasn't disgusted by what she did. I just had to tell myself that that's who she _was_. She couldn't help it."

"Oh." Fry replied, not quite sure where this new turn in the conversation had come from. "Who was she?"

"It's not important." Chelsea said quickly, and there was silence between the two of them. Fry was just beginning to worry that he'd said something wrong again when Chelsea changed the subject. "What are you going to do with the information that Hermes' wife gave you?" She asked.

Fry thought it over as they approached another streetlight. They were approaching an intersection. "I don't know." He said.

"Isn't there some kind of search and rescue organization here in the future?" Chelsea enquired. The two of them reached the intersection and Fry paused momentarily. He was used to the transport tubes and hadn't walked around this part of town often enough to recognize where he was. Chelsea, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly where they were. She immediately turned left. Fry rushed to catch up, and almost got backhanded in the face as she waved at a passing trashbot. She noticed that Fry was again at her side. "But anyway," she said, addressing the redhead, "isn't there a space-coastguard or something?"

Fry had to think about it. "Huh. I don't know. I mean, I guess there ought to be." He hadn't really considered the possibility. "What I meant though was that I didn't know what _I_ was going to do about it."

"What, you mean you're thinking about going to look for them?" She asked, incredulous. "You don't think you still owe them some kind of loyalty, right? I mean, Leela _betrayed_ you. You kicked her out of your apartment for lying about it to your face."

Fry nodded, although Chelsea almost certainly didn't see the gesture in the murky light. _Did I really do that?_ He thought to himself. He knew that he had, but it seemed so… strange now, like it was something he'd seen a long time ago in a half-forgotten movie. It was true that he was still angry at Leela and Bender for what they had done, but Chelsea's earlier words echoed in his head. _Sometimes people say or do things that other people misunderstand, not because they're cruel, or evil, but because they believe it is right_. That didn't work for Bender, who was undoubtedly cruel and definitely evil ( Bender had once shown him his 'certifiably evil' card), but as for Leela… Had she, somehow, thought that it was right to go behind his back and then lie about it? _Either way_, he wondered, _can I really hate them for being who they are?_

"Fry?" Chelsea prodded.

The redhead snapped out of his reverie. "What? Oh, sorry." He was quiet again for a moment while he collected his thoughts. "Yeah, I'm going to go look for them." He said. "They were my friends; I guess I feel like I owe them somehow. Besides, I think Leela would do the same for me." Fry realized suddenly that they had reached Chelsea's apartment building. Chelsea opened the door for him and they entered the lobby.

Chelsea mulled over what her friend had said while they waited for the elevator. "You talk about Leela as if she was such a great friend, and yet she betrayed you simply because it was convenient." The elevator car arrived and they walked in. Chelsea automatically pressed the button for the eighth floor. "I don't think I'll ever understand why you think that you need to go look for her and the others." She paused again. "But if you really think you need to, then I want to help you." There was a brief acceleration and then the doors opened. Moments later, Fry found himself standing right outside Chelsea's door. He heart immediately began to beat faster.

"T- thank you." Fry said, trying to concentrate on the issue at hand.

Chelsea's right hand was on the doorknob but her left was propped under her chin as a plan started to form in her head. "I'll tell you what." She said. "They've been missing for weeks; another few hours won't make a difference. Tomorrow morning we can rent a spaceship and go look for them at that planet that Hermes' wife mentioned. Does that sound alright to you?"

Fry nodded, and couldn't quite resist sneaking a glance at Chelsea's hand on the doorknob. Chelsea immediately caught on. "I'm really tired right now-" she said carefully. Fry's face immediately crumbled, and Chelsea put a hand on his shoulder. When Fry looked up at her she smiled at him. "Will you take a rain check?" She asked. Fry's face immediately lit up. _Men._ Chelsea thought. _So very easy to please_.

Chelsea gave Fry a quick hug and waited expectantly as the redhead got up the nerve to kiss her. When it finally came, it was on the cheek. Chelsea opened the door and slipped into her apartment. She waved at him as she started to close the door. "I'll come by your apartment tomorrow morning at dawn." She said, and Fry nodded. Right before the door clicked shut he spoke. "Chelsea?" He asked, hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"Back at Elzar's, right after Hermes offered me my job back, when you gave me that look… You weren't about to…" His voice trailed off.

The warm smile didn't leave Chelsea's face, but something changed back in the depths of her eyes. "Good night, Fry." She said softly, and closed the door.

* * *

Fry's doorbell rang at precisely 5:00 am. The redhead, who had just two hours earlier managed to slow his brain down enough to sleep, grunted, mumbled something incoherent, rolled over, and then continued snoring. Something touched his leg. He bolted upright, immediately awake, as his fight-or-flight, but mostly flight, reflex went into overdrive.

His eyes locked on a dark figure that was hunched over him, which quickly focused into Chelsea. She had a lopsided grin on her face, and her right hand was still lightly clutching his ankle through the sheets.

"Morning, sleepyhead." She teased him. "Ready to go?"

"Ch- Chelsea?!" He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "What are- How did you- What time is it?"

"5:03." She replied cheerfully.

Fry let himself fall back to the bed. "It should be illegal to wake people up this early." He grumbled. Then, after yawning dramatically, he sat up and then hauled himself to his feet. He completely forgot to be embarrassed that he was only wearing his boxers.

Fry went through the motions of dressing, showering, and shoveling a bowl of Bachelor Chow into his mouth. He noted somewhat absently that the Bachelor Chow didn't quite taste the same as usual. There was a distinctive, woody taste there that he'd never noticed before.

Chelsea was perched on his couch in the same spot as Leela had been during their argument so many ages ago. She was staring blankly out the window, but she apparently sensed that he was watching her, because her gaze swiveled to meet his. "All set?" She asked in a voice that, in Fry's opinion, was much too perky for that early in the morning.

"Umm, yeah." Fry acknowledged. "But uh, if you don't mind my asking, how did you get in here, anyway?"

Chelsea shrugged. "You didn't answer the doorbell, so I opened the door. It wasn't locked."

"Yes it was."

Another shrug. "Not _very_ locked."

Fry decided to let it go. After all, worse things had happened to him than being startled awake by beautiful women in the middle of the night.

The rental agency sat atop one of the larger towers in downtown New Manhattan. The office occupied the upper floor, with the rental ships parked in neat rows on the roof overhead. There was no line, and Fry was able to walk right up to the rental counter. A pretty looking redhead, about his age, was behind the counter. She was leaning against the desk and staring blankly at the countertop in front of her. The girl seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn't quite place her. All that came to mind was an image of a bar, and, for some reason, the word 'gaydar'. He tapped the counter to get her attention and she looked up at him.

"Oh, sorry, sir." She said. "I didn't see you come in. Can I help you?"

"Yeah, we'd like to rent a ship. Nothing big, just a…" He stopped. The girl was staring over his shoulder, mouth agape. "Uh, is something wrong?" He asked.

"Y- y- _you_!" The girl stuttered and pointed behind him. Fry turned to follow her finger. Chelsea was standing in the middle of the room, staring back at the clerk. She looked around and then behind her, trying to figure out who the clerk was pointing at. There was no one else around. "Uhh, do I know you?" Chelsea asked, startled. She looked as confused as Fry was.

There was panic in the rental clerk's eyes. "Oh my god. It _is_ you!" Then, to Fry's absolute bewilderment, she screamed, vaulted the counter, and ran for the nearest exit. In a split second she was gone.

Chelsea and Fry stared blankly at each other for a moment. "Uhh, any idea what that was all about?" Fry managed.

"I have absolutely no idea." Was all that Chelsea could think to say.

Somebody cleared their throat. Fry and Chelsea whirled to find another clerk standing at the doorway to a back office.

"Can I help you two?" he asked.

* * *

The balding, weasel-like clerk had been less than willing to assist them. Something about Fry that he couldn't quite place had sent alarm bells ringing in his head. It was only after extracting a promise that they would buy every type of insurance possible that he grudgingly turned over a set of keys.

The ship was a sporty little vessel, streamlined and elegant. The main body was a bright red cylinder of ten meters that tapered smoothly to a point at the bow. Four dark red fins sprouted from the aft quarter of the ship and stretched backward, extending beyond the main engine. A tiny defensive laser sat mounted on a turret between the two upper fins. The smoothness of the hull was broken by a narrow strip of tinted glassteel that marked the ship's cockpit. Inside, the ship was divided into three sections, each of which was separated by an airtight emergency hatch. The ship's main ramp led to a tiny airlock. Beyond that was a corridor that connected the bridge in the bow with the engine room in the stern. The living quarters, consisting of a head, a meager kitchen, a bed, and a couch, was situated amidships.

Fry wasn't particularly impressed by the ship's cramped cockpit, which barely contained enough volume for the two of them to squeeze in next to each other. At least the controls were familiar. He just hoped he still remembered how to fly. It had been awhile since the last time he'd flown a spaceship, and that hadn't ended well. Too bad Chelsea couldn't fly; She hadn't had time to apply for a license yet.

Fry started to rev up the engine as Chelsea watched, fascinated. She had not yet had the chance to travel off-world. The roar that started to build through the deck did not have the deep, throaty undertones of the Planet Express Ship. The quintessence engine that powered the vessel couldn't muster the raw power of Professor Farnsworth's dark matter engine. Still, when Fry pulled back on the stick he could almost feel the ship's eagerness to be airborne. Carefully, he began to apply pressure to the throttle, and the ship leapt into motion.

There was a jarring crash. "Oops." Fry said, taking the ship out of reverse. This time, when Fry fed power to the engines, the little red ship hurtled into the sky.

It took a few hours for the ship to reach the Cardenian System. Fry kept a close eye on the sensors for some sign of a distress signal, but apart from weak synchrotron emission from the nearby Taurus star-forming region, there was nothing unusual to speak of. One burst of radio noise briefly caught his attention, but the computer immediately disqualified it as coming from a known pulsar.

* * *

When they entered Cardenian space, Fry cut the engines and let the ship glide into the star's gravity well. It was a technique that he'd seen Leela employ on many occasions when she'd wanted to avoid detection. Anyone scanning them from long range would think them just another hunk of space rock hurtling starward in a hyperbolic orbit. Fry, on the other hand, could use his passive scanners to study the situation.

The Cardenian System seemed to be fairly ordinary. The central star was about twice the mass of the sun and glowed slightly bluer than Sol. Two rocky planets resided in the inner system. One was huge by human standards. Composed almost entirely of iron, it contained at least six times Earth's mass. The other terrestrial world was Cardena itself. The outer solar system consisted of a thin ring of rocks that could barely be called an asteroid belt and three distant ice giants made of helium and liquid methane.

"Uhoh." Chelsea said, and Fry took his eyes away from the radar.

"What?"

"This ship must have some kind of spectrometer built into it somewhere, because it just gave me a report on the composition of that second planet's atmosphere. It's mostly oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, but there's a lot of carbon monoxide too."

Fry stared at her. He was used to future-y science gibberish from Farnsworth and Leela, but it was bizarre to hear it from someone from the past who'd never even flown in a spaceship before. "Specter-ometer?"

Chelsea chuckled. "Sorry. I minored in astronomy in college. A spectrometer looks at the light that comes from something like a planet's atmosphere and can tell what the atmosphere is made of by what colors make up the light."

"And it found something bad?"

She nodded. "Yes. There's enough carbon monoxide down there to kill you if you went outside and tried to breathe"

Fry didn't like the sound of that. Bender wouldn't have a problem since Fry was pretty sure he didn't actually breathe, but if Leela and Amy were stuck down there then they'd be confined to the ship. He wasn't even sure the Planet Express Ship could recycle the air for the five weeks that they had been missing, or, for that matter, that Leela, Amy, and Bender could live together that long without killing each other. And if the ship had been damaged or destroyed…

The little video screen that sat on the console between the seats beeped and turned itself on. Fry felt his heart leap, but his hopes were dashed when Leela's face didn't appear. Instead, the screen began to flash "Warning!" in bold red letters. A pleasant female voice advised them that they were entering Cardenian space and that trespassers would be 'disappeared'. Fry's felt his blood freeze.

Chelsea cursed loudly. "Well, I think we know what happened to Leela and the others." She said bitterly.

Fry wasn't so sure. It would have taken a massive force to defeat Leela, and that's if she'd been taken by surprise. But with a warning to tell her of the danger? There was no way she'd have been taken out. When he said as much aloud Chelsea gave him a skeptical look but didn't contradict him.

"Ok, then what now?" She asked.

The question sent a thrill running through his body. For the first time ever he was in command of an actual spaceship. His and Chelsea's lives, and possibly those of Leela, Bender, and Amy, all depended on his next decision. The weight of the responsibility he suddenly felt himself cloaked with was almost overwhelming. He wondered how Leela had always managed to handle that burden so confidently.

"I need to use the restroom," he declared authoritatively, and rushed from the cockpit, butterflies in his stomach. A few minutes later the butterflies were flushed and Fry crawled back into the cockpit.

Fry reached out and thrust the throttle all the way forward. The quintessence engine roared into life and the universe itself began to stretch and deform, creating the illusion that distant Cardena was rushing toward them at impossible speed. Huge energies poured into the sea of virtual particles that frothed against the bow of the ship, and the particles, suddenly discovering that they had become real, annihilated each other in a flash of hard radiation. The glow of plasma heralded their entrance into Cardena's poisonous atmosphere. They'd just broadcasted their presence to everyone within a dozen lightyears, but Fry intended to be long gone before anyone could do a thing to stop them.

They circled the planet a dozen times, flying just high enough to clear the jagged mountain ranges. Fry kept one eye glued to the sensors while his other scanned the horizon. They were flying at many times the speed of sound, and the shockwave of their passage blasted snow, and what looked like ash, from the tops of the peaks. Chelsea was staring out the front viewport, face pale, certain that Fry had gone quite mad, but afraid to say anything lest she break his concentration and find herself smeared across a hundred square miles of alien landscape.

In a manner of minutes Fry had surveyed the entire surface of the planet's one continent. Satisfied that there was no trace of the Planet Express Ship to be found, he pulled back on the stick and the atmosphere faded to the black of space. Chelsea turned to her companion with newfound respect. "Where the heck did you learn to fly like that?" She demanded.

Fry just shrugged. "Meh, that was nothing. One time, I flew all the way around the Earth at less than 100 feet in two minutes while towing the whole Planet Express Building." He paused. "Well, okay, Bender actually flew part of the way. Well, with his ass, anyway."

Chelsea shook her head in disbelief. "I thought you were exaggerating when you told me that."

"It's not as hard as it looks. The ship's computer won't listen to you if you tell it to do something that'll get you all smashed up. And besides, Leela taught me how to fly a little back when-" Something on his instrument panel caught his attention.

"What is it?" Chelsea asked, worried by the sudden concern that clouded her friend's face.

"There's something funny on the radar." He said, throttling back the engines.

"Define _funny_."

"Hold on." He swung the ship into a wide turn, and a tiny patch of green rotated into the field of view. Chelsea squinted at it. It was some sort of ship. A marking of some kind was painted on its dorsal fin, but she couldn't make it out.

"Bad guys?" She asked.

Fry shook his head. He pressed a few buttons and the image of the ship expanded to fill the viewport. The vessel was spinning lazily, its lights dark and landing skids extended. It didn't look like anybody was home. "No, worse." Fry replied, gesturing at the Planet Express emblem that was now clearly visible on the ship's tailfin. "The good guys."


	7. Chapter 7

There weren't any life signs aboard the Planet Express Ship

There weren't any life signs aboard the Planet Express Ship. Fry ran the scan three times.

"I've got to go over there." Shielding his eyes against the glare of the nearby star with one hand, he tried to peer into the other vessel's darkened bridge. All he could make out were the vague silhouettes of some of the equipment. Nothing moved.

Chelsea was already hauling spacesuits out of the storage locker at the rear of the cockpit. She tossed one in his direction and then grabbed one of the fishbowl helmets for herself. The garments were surprisingly flexible and easy to get into, not at all like the old, bulky suits he'd used at Planet Express. Fry reached past Chelsea and picked up a helmet. When the helmet's rim touched the ring seal at his suit's neck there was a hiss of suction. Fry's nose immediately caught that unique metallic smell of canned air.

When they'd both finished putting on the suits, Fry nudged their ship against the derelict Planet Express Ship. Their vessel shuddered slightly when the airlocks mated. Fry double-checked each of Chelsea's seals, and the two humans squeezed into the tiny airlock.

A buzzer sounded back in the cockpit. Grumbling, Fry awkwardly extricated himself from the airlock and strode the few paces to the pilot's seat. The ship's computer was trying to warn him about a ship that was bearing down at them.

"A ship just showed up." He called back to Chelsea. "They're hailing us." He started to work the controls on the console in front of him. "Could you answer them? I'm going to start getting the weapons ready, just in case."

Chelsea slid back into the copilot seat and looked around her. She couldn't find anything that was obviously a radio amongst the knobs and dials that were spread before her. _You're in the future_, she reminded herself. _Think Star Trek_. "Uhh, on screen?" She was only half surprised when the video screen came alive with a hiss of static.

A squat, leathery creature dressed in a grey uniform glared at her from the screen. "You are in restricted space." The creature growled. "Power down your engines and open your outer hatch. Prepare to be boarded." The image disappeared.

"Did you hear that?" Chelsea asked.

Fry looked up from his console and nodded. Of course he'd heard it; he just wasn't particularly surprised. That kind of dialogue was typical bad guy stuff. You got used to it after working in space for awhile. "Yeah, I heard. He fiddled with a knob and an image of a spaceship filled the screen. For a minute he just stared at the stocky white alien vessel. It practically bristled with weapons. _Alright, Phil_. He told himself. _What now_? He didn't know enough about spaceships to know whether they could outrun them, or even what affect his ship's defensive laser would have on the other vessel's armor plated hide. But if he surrendered, he might very well suffer whatever fate had befallen Leela, Bender, and Amy. It suddenly seemed incredibly foolish to have gotten himself into this situation. _What the hell was I thinking coming out here? I'm just a dumb kid from the stupid ages!_

"I- I don't know what to do now." He admitted.

Chelsea looked at him as if he had spoken in Greek. "What do you mean?" She asked. "Now we fight."

He shook his head. "But I've never flown a ship during a battle before. All I ever did when I was working for Planet Express was fire the laser, and I don't know anything about tactics or stuff. I'll just end up getting us killed."

Chelsea put a hand on his shoulder. "If we surrender, they'll do to us whatever they did to the others. We don't have a choice; we have to fight."

"But-"

"You just worry about making sure we don't crash into anything." Chelsea said, cutting him off. "I'll take care of the rest. Just tell me how to make this thing shoot lasers."

Fry regarded her for a long moment. His brain told him that fighting wasn't the answer. He just didn't think there was anyway they could win, not with an inferior ship. But Chelsea seemed confident, as though she had access to some knowledge that was hidden from him.

"Right." She said.

Fry blinked. "What? I didn't say anyth-"

"No, I mean right. Move the ship to the right!"

"Well, it's actually called starboard when you're on a ship…"

"I don't care what it's called. Move the fucking ship. _Now_!" Chelsea grabbed the wheel and gave it a hard twist. An alarm blared as the seal between their vessel and the Planet Express Ship was broken. The little red ship rolled right and over the PE Ship's hull. The torpedo that had been meant for them sailed under their bow and detonated astern, sending a massive concussion reverberating through the ship.

"Ow!" Fry yelped as his head smacked against the wheel. He sat up and winced. "I guess they got tired of waiting for us to make up our minds." He looked over at Chelsea to make sure she was ok. She was rubbing an elbow that she'd banged against the hull, but seemed otherwise unhurt. Also angry.

"You alright?" He asked.

"Just tell me how to run the laser." The fire in her eyes made it clear that there would be no argument.

Fry pressed a button that was mounted on the ceiling and a blank panel on Chelsea's console slid away. A black joystick and a small video screen rose out of the console. A field of stars was displayed on the screen, with a large set of red crosshairs painted at the center. Chelsea grabbed the stick and gave it an experimental flick to the left. The stars flew across the screen from left to right, and the laser turret hummed as it rotated overhead on its track. In a matter of seconds she had the enemy ship centered in the crosshairs. She nodded at Fry.

Fry took a deep breath and threw the throttle forward. The enemy ship responded immediately, letting loose a barrage of violet plasma fire. Most of it passed overhead, but a stray shot glanced off the shields. Their own weapon responded with a staccato burst of green light. The first few volleys were nowhere near their target, but Chelsea soon had the hang of the controls.

When the first rounds splashed against the enemy's shields Chelsea let out a whoop. "Take that, jackass!"

Fry hazarded a glance in her direction as he made a sloppy series of barrel rolls. To his utter amazement, Chelsea seemed to actually be enjoying herself.

A loud thump shook the ship. "They're behind us!" Chelsea yelled, and then let off another barrage of laser fire. Fry tried to lose them, but he proved no match for the trained enemy pilot.

"I can't shake them!" Fry yelled in desperation as a wave of plasma washed over the shields.

"Pull back on the stick, then cut the engines!" It was an order. Fry obeyed, and the enemy ship rocketed by underneath them. Fry throttled up the engines and slid in behind them. Chelsea didn't fire. She was looking at something at the top of the joystick. She gave it a flick with her fingernail and a plastic covering fell away, exposing a little cavity. In the cavity was a big red button.

"Huh." Chelsea pressed it.

The engines died without so much as a cough. Systems throughout the ship turned themselves off. "What-?" Fry said as the artificial gravity quit. It was suddenly dark and eerily quiet. Not even the throbbing of the ship's life support systems could be heard. "What did you do?!"

"Well that's just great." Chelsea was saying. "Who the hell puts a surrender button on a weapons system anyway? The French?"

Fry was about to say something when he felt the slightest vibration in the armrest he'd grabbed as the closest available anchor for his freefalling body. Chelsea felt it too.

"Uhh, what is that?" She asked as it started to build. A high-pitched whine began to fill the ship.

Fry's first thought was that it was some kind of suck ray, which Leela had told him was the technical term for what he'd always called a tractor beam, but the enemy ship, which he could still see through the front viewport, was too far away to be using one on them. In fact, they weren't doing much of anything, just sitting idle. _Maybe they're as confused about what's going on as we are_. He thought.

The whine increased in intensity until it was at a level that was barely tolerable and the vibration increased to the point that it became difficult to hold onto the armrest. Then both abruptly stopped, and all was still.

"Okaaay-" Chelsea began. Something tore through Fry's body like a million shards of hot glass. He had the crazy idea that his body was flying apart in all directions. He and Chelsea both started to scream, but the sensation was already gone.

As Fry tried in vain to slow his heart rate he could hear Chelsea in the background swearing up a storm. When he finally had calmed himself to the point that he could meet her gaze he found her grinning like a maniac.

"A goddamned quintessence bomb." She laughed. "I don't even believe it."

She must have seen that he was looking at her as if she'd just sprouted an extra head, because she visibly made an effort to get herself back under control. "Sorry." She said. "I guess I'm a little high on adrenaline." Another laugh. "A quintessence bomb." She shook her head. "Who would ever have thought?"

When all she got as a response was a blank stare, she tried to explain. "The rental agency guy said that the ship was powered by a quintessence engine. I didn't think about it then, but that's a fancy word for dark energy. Do you know what that is?"

Fry shook his head.

"Dark energy is the stuff that causes the universe to expand. I guess you could say that it makes space _bigger_. I didn't even think it was possible, but I guess in the future scientists know how to use the stuff to expand and contract different parts of the universe. That's how the ship gets from one place to another, by shrinking the space in front of it and expanding the space behind. I think that, when I pressed that button I told the ship to take all the energy it had available and use it to lob a chunk of dark energy at that other ship."

Fry, suddenly remembering that they were in the middle of a battle, searched frantically for the enemy ship in the viewport.

"Don't bother trying to find it." Chelsea said, waving casually in the general direction of the ship's last position. They're probably stuck behind their own event horizon by now. I wonder what it feels like to have your body disassembled piece by piece right down to the subatomic particles?"

Fry thought about that for awhile. "So, we won?" He asked cautiously.

Chelsea grinned at him. "Oh yeah. We won. We totally kicked their ass-" Something hit the ship. Fry and Chelsea were thrown roughly back into their seats.

Fry tried to read his instruments, but they were all still dead. There was another series of loud bangs, followed by the sound that space travels dread above all else, the peculiar whistle of rushing air.

"They're shooting at us again!" Fry yelled.

"No shit!" Then: "We're leaking oxygen!"

Silently Fry thanked whatever supreme being that happened to be listening in that they were both still wearing their spacesuits. The emergency hatch closed inches behind Fry's head. The hiss of escaping air died immediately, but now he and Chelsea were locked on the bridge of a nonresponsive spaceship under fire. _We have to get out of here._ Fry realized. A green form in the viewport caught his eye.

Chelsea saw it too. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

_Of course! _ _The Planet Express Ship!_

The enemy ship fired again. The rounds impacted in the stern. Strangely, there was no explosion this time. When Fry hit the emergency hatch release it immediately became apparent why. The whole rear half of the ship had been sheered away. Bits of rapidly cooling metal and miscellaneous detritus were floating out of the slowly retreating aft section like blood seeping from a wound. The senseless destruction was, Fry had to admit, incredibly cool. But there wasn't time for that now.

The redhead grabbed Chelsea around the waist and fired a burst from the thruster pack mounted on his suit. The ruins of the ship began to recede. Fry fired again, and the Planet Express Ship swung into view, as did the enemy vessel. It wasn't the same ship that had attacked them the first time. This one was bigger, and had a large 'M' emblazoned on the underside of its hull. At no point in his life had Fry felt so vulnerable as he did at that moment, hanging as he was in the middle of space with nothing to protect him from a well placed plasma round than a tenth of an inch of glass and fabric. He just hoped the enemy gunner wasn't a good shot.

As it turned out, he needn't have worried. The enemy vessel didn't shoot.

Fry and Chelsea made it to the Planet Express Ship's airlock. He just prayed Hermes hadn't gotten on the crew to change the access code every month like they were supposed to. The airlock light turned green. _Yes!_

Inside, the ship seemed physically undamaged, although life support and artificial gravity were apparently offline. When Fry and Chelsea stepped out of the airlock, the ship's lights turned on automatically. Fry began propelling himself down the hallway in the direction of the bridge.

As soon as they entered the compartment they felt the tug of gravity pull at their bodies. Fry's ear caught the whir of a ventilation fan. The bridge's emergency power generator was still operational, then. He removed his helmet and tossed it aside. Chelsea waited to make sure he could breathe before following suit. "So this is the famous Planet Express Ship, huh?" Her eyes took in the sleek bridge. "Impressive."

Fry didn't respond, but instead took his old place at tactical. He tried not to think about the gruesome scene he'd been half-expecting to find on the bridge. The console came alive when he sat before it. A complex wave of emotions washed over him as he was confronted with the memories that accompanied that chair- that ship. He forced himself to suppress them. The console was advising him that there was a ship coming alongside. Fry's eyes went wide and he bolted from the seat.

"What?! What's going on?!" Chelsea demanded as Fry bolted across the bridge. The redhead dove into the Captain's seat and twisted the key that was still in the ignition.

The ship shook. Chelsea almost lost her balance, but grabbed the monitor that hung from the ceiling to steady herself.

An alarm sounded somewhere belowdecks. One of the first things Leela had done after being appointed Captain of the Planet Express Ship was to force Fry to memorize the sound of every alarm that the ship possessed. It had proven a daunting task. There were a lot of things that could go wrong in space, and each of them had its own alarm. This one was a low wail, almost solemn in its timbre. It quickly crescendoed to a climax and then slowly faded to silence before repeating. _That meant_-

"We're being boarded!" Fry exclaimed

Chelsea swore under her breath. "What about weapons? Do we have laser guns onboard or something?"

Fry shook his head. "No. Leela was afraid that Bender would try and hijack the ship if she kept guns around. She probably had one hidden onboard somewhere in case of an emergency, but I dunno where."

"Well, it probably doesn't matter anyway." Chelsea replied in resignation.

"Huh? Why?" Chelsea nodded toward the rear of the bridge. Three spacesuited figures floated through the hatchway and landed lightly on their feet as the artificial gravity caught them. Each of them had nasty looking laser rifles clutched in their ungloved hands.

The lead figure gestured with his pistol for Fry and Chelsea to place their hands over their heads. When they had complied he reached for the seals around his neck and his helmet detached with a click. The creature was of the same species as the aliens that first challenged them. Its head was small and wide with two small horns at the top. Two slits high up in the center of the face served as a nose. Two large eyes sat at either end of the face, bulging outward in such a way that Fry thought they might fall out of the alien's skull. The skin was brown and leathery, giving the impression of having been out in the sun for too long. Overall, the alien didn't appear all that threatening, except for the laser, of course.

"Move away from the controls." The alien ordered in a low, gravelly voice. "Make any sudden movements and I _will_ shoot you."

Fry and Chelsea had no choice but to comply. "Who the hell are you?" Chelsea demanded.

"And what did you do to Leela and the others?" Fry added. Chelsea shot a glance in his direction, surprised at the tension in the redhead's voice.

The alien frowned at the insolence of the weird-looking creature that stood before him. "My name is Lox. This is Kali and Erenor." He gestured to his two companions, who still had their weapons pointed squarely at the humans' faces. "But that isn't important." Lox continued. "What matters is that we're a private security contractor hired by Momcorp to patrol the Cardena System. You two are trespassing-"

"Wait, hold on a minute!" Chelsea interrupted. "You work for Momcorp? I'm a Momcorp employee! I work security at corporate headquarters in New New York."

"Did you have official business here?"

"Well n-" Fry stared at her, and she caught herself. "I mean yeah. Definitely. We were, uhh, testing out a new guidance system that-"

"That's enough!" Lox sneered. "Don't take me for an idiot. There weren't any authorized missions to this system logged for today. You think I'd tell my own men to shoot at people who had a legitimate reason to be here?"

"But we were only trying to find our friends!" Fry protested. "They work for a delivery company and were hired to bring a package here. But something happened to them. They never came back!"

Lox's eyes went wide. "You mean those morons that owned this ship?"

"Yeah, them." Fry's hands involuntarily balled themselves into fists at the insult. "What happened to them? Where are they?"

The alien laughed. "I have no idea. They cost Momcorp more income in five minutes than most planets make in a century. Whatever Mom's sons did to them, I probably don't want to know about it. Serves them right though. What a fool their captain must have been, actually ordering a robot to-"

"You take that back!" Without even having made the conscious decision to do it, Fry found himself lunging at Lox with every intent to rip the sneer right off of the wrinkly alien's face. He made it about halfway before the helmeted alien on the right reacted. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the barrel of the laser rifle tracked in his direction. The other suited alien moved to put himself in between his commander and the ball of redheaded fury. Erenor, the alien with the weapon aimed at Fry's forehead, squeezed the trigger, and Fry waited for the concentrated beam of photons to sear its way into his skull. He closed his eyes.

His momentum changed sharply. Chelsea grabbed ahold of Fry's ankle and pulled hard. Fry toppled over and crashed into a bulkhead. The laser buried itself harmlessly in the hull, passing right through the spot that Fry's face had been a second earlier. Chelsea rolled and pushed off the floor. She hit Erenor squarely in the chest. The alien went limp as his pistol flew from his hand. Her momentum carried them both through the hatch and into freefall. Chelsea spun around. She kicked off the deck and plowed into Lox from behind. She easily managed to pull the laser from the alien's grasp. That only left- Searing pain ripped through Chelsea's shoulder. She screamed and convulsed. Her body collided hit the deck with sickening force.

Erenor's pistol slid across the deck and came to a rest by Fry's right hand. He had just enough time to see Kali begin to squeeze the trigger. The redhead had spent many a night after a particularly epic laser battle lying in his cot on the Planet Express Ship wondering if, when the time finally came, whether he'd actually be able to willingly shoot someone; whether he was capable of making the conscious decision to kill. As it turned out, seeing your friend get shot was a powerful motivator.

Fry's pistol fired almost of its own accord, burying several petajoules of energy in the alien's side. Kali's own shot went wide, burning a long gash in Chelsea's left shoulder. Kali herself was not so fortunate. As her body fell into the corridor outside the bridge, it began to spin lazily. A stream of red globules flowed from the corpse, hovering in the air nearby like a cloud of satellites. Fry stared at the body, horrified. His hand began to shake, and he looked down at the weapon in his hand almost in disbelief. Then he lost his stomach contents all over the bridge.

"So, what are we gonna do with them?" Fry asked. He'd never taken prisoners before. In fact, he was pretty sure that only badguys took prisoners. The captives had been moved to the vicinity of the airlock while Fry and Chelsea decided their fates. Kali's body, having been too much for Fry to deal with, had been placed out of sight in the engine room.

Lox and Erenor were floating miserably against the bare patch of the hull. The redhead was floating upside down with respect to the ship's normal orientation. He had one hand firmly planted on the rim of metal that protruded from the airlock to keep himself steady. Chelsea was nearby, and had one of the laser rifles trained at the captives. She seemed to have to think over her response. "Well." She said eventually. "We can't let them go. They'll have us arrested for murder when we get home."

Fry's face went pale. _Murder?!_ "But it was in self defense! They were going to kill us!"

"No we weren't." Lox protested. "Not until you attacked us. If we'd wanted to kill you we would have fried you the moment you pulled that stunt to get away from the ship we crippled."

"Shut up, you!" Chelsea snapped. "Fry, think about it. Who are the courts going to believe? Two regular people who were snooping around somewhere that they weren't supposed to be, or a licensed security force backed by the biggest industrial machine in the galaxy?"

He had to admit that she had a point. "But what are we gonna do then? We can't just kill them. Then we really _would _be murderers!"

"Fry." She said, and waited for him to look directly at her. "We don't have a choice. Either we kill them, or we'll be hanged for a crime we didn't commit. They took their own lives into their hands the moment they started shooting at us." Suddenly there was something hard and cold in the back of Chelsea's eyes that sent a shiver running down his spine. He got an unsettling feeling that the person he was seeing now was not the woman that he'd met in at Applied Cryogenics.

"I- you can't kill them! For god's sakes Chelsea, they're unarmed! You can't shoot someone if they're unarmed! Haven't you ever watched Star Trek?!"

Chelsea nodded. "I thought you'd object. I envy you, really, for standing up for your sense of morality like this. But you're wrong, and I'm not going to let either of our lives be destroyed because these _creatures_ were stupid enough to get in our way." She smiled at him, and Fry could see that there was genuine affection in it. Before he could object again, Chelsea pushed off from the bulkhead and floated toward Lox. She casually grabbed a pipe that jutted from the ceiling and came to a stop mere inches from the alien. She thrust her weapon into his face. Lox flinched away from her hand, and Chelsea snorted in disgust.

"Please don't do this." Lox pleaded. "If you let us go, we'll forget that you were ever even here. You have my word."

"Your word doesn't mean anything to me." Chelsea replied, and casually cocked the weapon.

Lox panicked. "No, wait! Stop!" He grabbed her arm. "I'm begging you!"

Chelsea froze. She looked at the alien's face, then down at the leathery hand that was planted at her wrist. When she spoke her voice was cold as ice. "No subhuman touches Chelsea Lynn Xiao."

What happened next was a blur. Chelsea grabbed Lox by the neck and threw him across the small compartment. The alien's skull collided with a control panel. The snap of bone cut his screams short. At the same time, Erenor pushed off from the deck and bolted for the hatch, knocking Fry out of the way. The Asian woman spun and let out a yell that made Fry's blood run cold. Chelsea kicked off the wall and shot through the hatch after the fleeing captive. She caught her quarry right in the corridor beyond the alien ship's airlock. Chelsea cocked her arm and let loose a left hook that dented the alien's armored spacesuit. The sheer force of the blow knocked the wind out of him. Erenor's eyes began to roll back in his head, but Chelsea wasn't done. Fry, who'd raced after them in the hopes of intervening, turned away right before she fired her laser rifle into the alien's face at point blank range. The whole compartment filled with the smell of scorched flesh.

Fry forced himself to look. Erenor's entire head was gone. Chelsea floated over the alien's ruined form, an anger like nothing Fry had ever seen before causing her whole body to tremble. The whole front of her was covered with the blood of her vanquished opponent. When she looked at him there was nothing human to be seen in her eyes. Instinctively Fry tried to back away, though it was impossible in freefall. Chelsea, seeing the terror in his face, tried to go to him.

"Fry, I-"

Fry leveled his own weapon at her. "Who are you?" He asked with a squeak.

Chelsea hesitated. "What do you mean? Fry, put down the gun"

But Fry shook his head. "Nuh-uh." The image of Erenor's dented spacesuit stuck in his mind. "You're not human." It wasn't a question. "Who are you? _What_ are you?"

"Fry, it's me! Put down the gun. You're not thinking straight. You hit your head, remember?"

It was true. There was a nasty bruise on his forehead from when Chelsea had grabbed his ankle and slammed him into the wall to save his life. But, even so, his gut was confirming what his head already knew. "You called yourself Chelsea Xiao. Why?"

"What? Oh, that. It was my father's name. My mother divorced him and I went with her, so my name changed to Porter. I guess I just used my father's name because I was angry." Her voice acquired a pleading tone. "Fry, please. It's me. I wouldn't ever hurt you. You- you're the only person in the whole future that I care about. You must know that. Please, just put the gun away."

Fry felt his composure falter. _What am I doing?_ He asked himself. He lowered the gun slightly. Chelsea made no move to advance on him. He opened his mouth to apologize, but something stopped him. For some reason, the girl from the rental agency appeared in his mind. Something told him that she was very important. He tried to concentrate. Where do I know her from? An image of a bar sprang into his head. Bright lights, futuristic music. Alcoholic drinks and covert glances at Leela, who was sitting at a booth with Amy and a man that he'd never seen before. Puppets. Puppets were important somehow. _Saucy puppet show_. _ I told Bender to go see a saucy puppet show so that I could have the apartment to myself. That girl from the rental agency, I took her home that night. She was from the 21__st__ century. But why is that important? _ When the answer came it, hit him like a thunderclap. _Cyborgs_.

Fry raised the pistol again. "That girl from the rental agency. She was from the 21st century. She lived through the War of 2012. And she recognized you."

Chelsea froze. Her face went completely white.

"It was you, wasn't it?" Fry asked in amazement. "You're the leader of the cyborgs, the daughter of the scientist that created them. You froze yourself to escape when you realized you were losing."

A part of him waited for her to laugh at him, to tell him how ridiculous that sounded and explain just how impossible all of it was. That part of him died when he read the confirmation in Chelsea's face. She reached out toward him, placating him. He could see that there was real pain in her eyes. "Fry, please, don't hate me. You're the only friend I have." Fry retreated from her grasp.

"You called Lox a subhuman, and then killed him when he was unarmed. You looked down on Hermes just because he has an alien working for him. You _lied_ to me." Chelsea moved toward him, and Fry retreated into the Planet Express Ship. The laser rifle trembled in his hands. When Chelsea began to follow him through the airlock he slapped the hatch's emergency seal button, and six inches of metal swung into place between them. For a moment, the two of them watched each other through the small porthole in the hatch. Tears began to form in the corners of Chelsea's eyes, and Fry turned away before he could betray his own pain. Chelsea, suddenly furious, pounded at the hatch. A series of dings appeared in the hatch's alloy surface, but even Chelsea's superhuman strength was unable to do any significant damage.

Fry hesitated. He reached behind himself and swatted the button marked 'intercom' that was mounted on a control panel next to the hatch. "I'm leaving." He said. Chelsea started to respond, but Fry cut the connection. He ran to the bridge before Chelsea realized she might be able to burn through the hatch with her laser.

The Planet Express Ship's controls felt strange in his hands. It was almost surreal to be sitting in Leela's chair. He tried to banish the latent guilt that was still left from the last time he'd flown the ship, and let out a deep breath to calm himself. He pressed a button. There was a clang as the ship detached itself from the other vessel.

A few bursts from the maneuvering thrusters rotated the ship to face the white alien vessel. Fry could just barely make out a lone figure standing, arms crossed, on the vessel's bridge. Silently he mouthed the words 'I'm sorry", but he knew Chelsea was probably too far away to have seen. A low clunk from underfoot signaled that the automated distress beacon he had ordered launched was away. After pausing to make sure it was squawking on all frequencies he pushed the throttle forward, and the stars rushed around him.

**Interlude**

Night became day and then faded to night again in an endless progression of misery. Her body stalked the echoing corridors, eyes blank, a laser rifle resting against its shoulder. Imprisoned in her own head, She had long ago ceased railing at her body's betrayal. When Walt passed, she no longer tried to force her limbs to follow her orders, or her finger to depress the trigger on the weapon that was maddeningly in her grasp, but utterly beyond her control. Even those dark moments in which she'd tried in vain to turn the rifle on herself had passed. Now all that was left her was a simmering, brooding hatred, which she carefully nursed. She would bide her time; gather her strength. When Walt passed by one morning, he looked her square in the eye and laughed at her, secure in his total victory. She let it pass. The moment wasn't right, the control he had over her too complete. Walt must have caught something- a tiny change in her posture perhaps- because his smile wavered for a split second. Her body continued walking as it mechanically completing its assigned instructions. _This isn't over_. She said silently to Walt's back. _You're time will come_.


	8. Chapter 8

**Part Four: Low Earth Orbit, July 15****th****, 3002**

The autopilot automatically placed the Planet Express Ship in a parking orbit around Earth when Fry gave it no landing coordinates. It chimed at him for further instructions, but the redhead didn't hear. He was staring blankly out the front viewport, lost entirely in thought. _How could I have been so stupid?_ He wondered. In retrospect, it was pretty obvious that she'd been hiding something. The way she'd been reluctant to talk about the past, the fuzzy details about her family and friends, her proficiency with the laser when they were fighting the Momcorp guards… None of it fit with the scared, vulnerable girl that he'd helped adjust to a new life in the 31st century. And there were other clues, things that he should have picked up on. The strange looks she gave to aliens that passed on the streets, that comment she'd made about Hermes at the restaurant; And then there had been the incident with the rental clerk. _Why did I just let that pass? He wondered. Am I really that clueless? Or did I just want so badly to believe that the mask that Chelsea put up for me was the real thing that I ignored anything that might hint otherwise?_

He let his body sink farther into the padding of the Captain's chair and let his head rest on his arms, which he'd crossed in front of him on the ship's wheel. The autopilot chimed at him again. It was becoming annoyed with its sluggish pilot. Fry ignored it. _What am I going to do?_ He couldn't go home. When Chelsea made it back to Earth, and he was confident that she would, she'd probably go looking for him. He already knew how effective his front door was at keeping her out.

Fry felt a wave of despair wash over him. _I've done it again_. He realized. The despair was replaced by self-loathing. _ I had another chance to start over, and I screwed it up. Again! I cant go back to work, not with a crazy cyborg after me. I can't go home. What am I going to do?!_

The autopilot chimed a third time, much more insistently than before. The machine's consciousness was beginning to worry that something might be wrong with the human in the Captain's chair. For the pentillionth time it wished that someone would update it with rudimentary language software. Until then, it would have to determine the best course of action without input from the pilot. Its main autonomous decision tree dictated that, in the case that it had been granted control of the ship and its crew had become nonresponsive, it should return to base as quickly as possible. When Fry didn't make any attempt to feed the machine new orders, the autopilot restarted the engines and dipped the vessel's nose into the atmosphere.

Fry picked his head up from the steering wheel and immediately had to shade his eyes from the glow of superheated plasma that had built up around the ship's nose. Thinking that he was crashing, Fry panicked. Luckily, the computer had already decided he was in no condition for command and ignored his orders, or the PE ship would likely have come apart under the strain of the things that Fry was telling it to do.

In a few seconds the ship had slowed to the point that the plasma faded away. New New York sat before him, its lights glittering like a jewel in the night. Fry stopped wrestling with the unresponsive controls and watched the city rise up to meet him. The ship banked to starboard, and suddenly Fry was flying over the Hudson River. Up ahead in the distance there was a shimmering light. There was enough moonlight for the redhead to make out the shape of the Planet Express Building. The light was escaping through the structure's roof as the hangar doors opened to welcome him.

The Planet Express Ship settled gently on its haunches and turned itself off. Fry pulled the key from the ignition and stood. Not really sure what else to do, the redhead left the bridge and wandered to the ship's ramp. His steps echoed loudly in the stillness. He knew it was silly, but he felt a little guilty for being in the Planet Express building uninvited. It wasn't really trespassing- he hadn't wanted to come here, after all- but it still felt weird. And then to top it off, he wasn't really sure yet where he was going.

The door at the rear of the Professor's laboratory whisked open, and Farnsworth came shuffling out, his white lab coat rustling about him. The scientist was carrying a giant set of tongs and a big cardboard box that was labeled "Leela's Organs". When he saw Fry standing at the foot of the ship, the spring left the old man's step.

"Huh-wha?" Farnsworth came to a stop a few feet from the redhead. He adjusted his glasses. "Fry? What are you doing here?"

Fry just shrugged. "I dunno. I didn't mean to be here. The ship wanted to come here."

"Yes, the ship sent me a message that it was coming, and that the pilot might need medical attention." He raised his tongs, pointedly. "Is Leela injured?"

"No Professor, sorry." His eyes fell. "I went looking for her, but all I found was the ship."

"Ah, I see." Farnsworth's face crumpled in disappointment. He let the box slide to the floor, jostling the empty jars that were contained within.

Fry, of course, misinterpreted his reaction. "I know. I miss her too." It was true, no matter how much it hurt his pride to admit it. Suddenly, the weight of the day's events came crashing down on him, and he remembered that he hadn't slept more than a few hours in the last forty eight "Hey, Professor," he said, stifling a yawn, "can I crash here tonight?"

The abrupt change in subject didn't seem to catch the scientist off guard. Fry thought it most likely that it was because Farnsworth had forgotten the previous conversation already. "Why of course! Just remember to be awake by 6:00. You have an early morning cheeseburger delivery to the planet of American Stereotypes."

"Uhh, but Professor, I don't work here anym- Oh, never mind." Farnsworth began to shamble away, but he stopped when he'd made it about halfway to the door at the back of his lab. "Oh, and Fry," He called over his shoulder, "Have you seen Leela?"

The lumpy. stained cushions of the lounge's couch were more of a mental comfort than a physical one. It was only a short time before Fry felt the mantle of sleep descend upon him, but he forced it away momentarily. He knew that he would have to do something decisive come the next morning. It was sorely tempting to just cut his looses and see if that job Hermes had offered him was still available, but he knew that it wouldn't work. He'd never actually told Chelsea where Planet Express was located, but she'd figure that out pretty quick. It would also be the first place that she looked for him when it became clear that he wasn't going to return to his apartment. For now he was safe; No one was going to break into the Planet Express building. The place had been made a fortress, both to guard against anyone meaning to steal Farnsworth's doomsday devices, and, to some extent, to keep some of the Professor's experiments from thinking about escaping.

Fry's thoughts turned to Leela. When he'd had to work with her she'd seemed bossy and overbearing, but she'd always had his back, no matter what. Now that she was gone, he realized how much that in itself had meant to him, and how much he had taken it for granted. But he didn't just miss Leela, he missed the whole Planet Express crew. He was even beginning to look back fondly on Bender's shenanigans. Well, the ones that had only ended with Fry in the hospital, anyway. His new life had seemed so promising, but now it lay in shambles, all because his new girlfriend just happened to turn out to be some psychotic cyborg bent on the systematic assimilation or extermination of all organic life. To make things worse, Fry was probably now at the very top of said crazy cyborg's hit list.

_Who would've ever thought having a cyborg for a girlfriend could possibly be a bad thing?_ He thought darkly.

Chelsea would probably kill him if she found him, and he couldn't do a thing about it. The only person that might possibly be able to take her on was Leela, and she was missing. _If only I knew where she was_. _That alien guard said that Mom's sons took her._ That could mean anything, he knew. She could be stuck in some private prison hidden somewhere- _anywhere_- in the universe. For that matter, she might very well be dead. And there's no way for me to know, one way or the other. A thought, born of desperation and the fuzzy logic that comes with being on the edge of sleep, thrust its way into the forefront of his mind. _Unless I sneak into Momcorp headquarters and find out…_

A jolt of adrenaline blasted through Fry's system when someone tried to shake him awake. His eyes shot open, but it was only Hermes that was standing over him. He'd slept through the entire night. No crazed cyborgs had assaulted the building.

Hermes looked about as perplexed as Fry had ever seen him. "By Jah, Fry, what are you doing here? And why is da ship back in da hangar?"

Now that the adrenaline rush was gone, it took a moment for Fry's brain to climb out of its fog. He blinked, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and sat up. "Ungh, what?"

A hint of annoyance began to creep into the bureaucrat's voice. He tried again. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, sorry." Fry leaned back, and, raising his arms over his head, tried to stretch. His vertebrae made soft popping noises as he turned his torso to the left and right. "I went looking for Leela, Bender, and Amy yesterday. I found the ship."

Hermes blinked in surprise. "I see…" That was good news. Planet Express had been, for all intents and purposes, out of business without its spaceship. The professor was in the process of dusting off the old blueprints, but it would be months before a working vessel could be built. The lost revenue from all of those packages that wouldn't be delivered would have been a near disaster for the company.

"And what about da crew?"

Fry stopped stretching, and his face fell. "I didn't find them." He brightened. "But I have a list of things I'm going to do to figure out where they are…"

"You mean a plan?"

"Yeah, that."

The first thing to do was to stop by his apartment and retrieve everything that he could. It was risky, he knew that, but he found himself unable to allow Chelsea the chance to smash the few treasures he'd managed to collect during his stay in the future. If nothing else, he _had_ to retrieve his holophoner and that picture of Leela.

The closer he got to his apartment building, the more conspicuous he felt. By the time he'd reached the building's front door his heart was beating hard enough that he thought every pedestrian that happened by couldn't fail to hear it thumping in his chest. He scanned the lobby for hidden attackers, but it was empty. As he was about to press the elevator call button, the set of elevator doors to his left clunked open. The noise made him jump. An old woman shuffled out of the elevator car and, upon seeing the stark terror in his eyes, favored him with an odd look. Fry leaned against the wall to catch his breath, but the elevator doors began to close, and he had to squeeze through.

No one was waiting in ambush in the hallway outside his apartment, and he discovered with relief that his door was still locked. Even so, it took him awhile to gather the courage to put his key in the lock and enter the apartment. When the door squeaked opened he flinched in anticipation, but nothing happened.

Just to make sure he was really alone, Fry grabbed a knife off of his kitchen counter and carefully checked every nook and cranny that might serve as a hiding place. Finally, and at long last, he was convinced that he really was alone. His anxiety didn't lessen, however, as he kept expecting Chelsea to come smashing into the room at any moment.

The holophoner and picture were both where he'd left them; the holophoner in its case under his bed, and the picture on his dresser. He stuffed the picture into the inside of his jacket and grabbed the instrument case in his right hand before making a beeline for the door. Something caught his eye. A piece of paper was sitting on the little end table next to his sofa. Curious, he picked it up, and every hair on the back of his neck stood up. It was a bill for the ship he and Chelsea had rented, and under it, neatly stacked, was a handful of crisp bills exactly covering Chelsea's half of the bill. He bolted.

After he'd put about a mile between himself and his apartment, he finally managed to calm himself enough to remember that he had a mission. He made his way to the Robot Arms apartment building and stashed the holophoner and the picture in his old room. It was the safest place he could think of. He didn't remember telling Chelsea where he and Bender had lived before he'd been fired, and he didn't think she'd expect him to use it as a hiding place. Or at least, he hoped she wouldn't.

The second phase of his plan wasn't quite as thought out. He knew that he wanted to get into the Momcorp headquarters building, but as for how he was going to manage that, or for that matter, how exactly he was going to discover the PE crew's whereabouts once he made it inside, he had no idea. There was also the small issue that Chelsea worked as a guard in the building. That ruled out trying to break in during the dayshift.

Inspiration finally struck after he'd been sitting at a café down the street for two hours, staring blankly at the Momcorp building while he nursed a cup of lousy coffee. A swarm of brown boxes was flitting in and out of the upper floors of the building, no doubt being processed by Momcorp's delivery company, which was Planet Express's main competitor.

When the sun finally set, Fry was just leaving a small convenience store. He had a roll of masking tape in one hand and a marker in the other. Whistling to himself, he nonchalantly made his way into the alley adjacent to the store. A few broken down cardboard boxes were stashed at the rear of the alley next to an overflowing dumpster. He was in luck; one of the boxes looked just big enough for him to crawl into. Shifting his supplies to his other hand, he propped the flattened box under his arm and set off for the nearest tubeway.

When he'd found a tube with no one nearby to see him, put down his load and put the box together. When the bottom of the box had been taped together he scribbled a fake address on it, put it in the tube, and then climbed in. Unfortunately, Mom's Friendly Surveillance Unit would have caught him on tape making the shipment, so they would know who to send the shipping bill to.

The tube's computer waited for him to give it a destination. "Momcorp Delivery Services, please." He said, not really sure why he was being polite to a computer program. Carefully, Fry closed the top of the box and applied a little tape to the inside of the lid to keep it from opening, and the tube whisked him away.

One disorienting and extremely uncomfortable ride later, Fry found himself lying on his head in the dark. He listened for voices or any other sound of people nearby, but everything was quiet. Slowly he undid the tape that was keeping the lid on the box and pushed upward against what had originally been the bottom of the box with his feet. The box slid upward a few inches and he surveyed what he could see of his surroundings through the gap between the box and the floor. He was in a large warehouse of sorts that was piled from floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes of every size imaginable. No one seemed to be anywhere nearby. Satisfied that he was alone, the redhead extricated himself from his cardboard Trojan horse and stood up. After dusting himself he looked around him for an exit. He had to search for it, hidden as it was behind a stack of boxes.

On the other side of the door was a long, grey corridor that curved away in both directions. _Alright. _He said to himself. _Now, if I were some kind of super secret database thingy, where would I be?_ After much thought, Fry decided to head left. It seemed as good a direction as any.

This late in the day, all of the corridors were empty. Fry tried some of the doors that he came across, but most of them were locked, and the rest were storerooms and offices that contained nothing of use to him.

It was just starting to dawn on him how very large the Momcorp building was, and how very unlikely it was that he was going to stumble upon the information that he was looking for when he thought he heard the sound of distant footsteps behind him. He froze for a moment and listened. Yes, there was definitely someone coming. His first impulse was to run, but he caught himself. He tried a nearby door; it was unlocked. As quietly as he could he pushed it open enough to squeeze his body through, and then lightly pressed it closed again. The clunk-clunk-clunk of boots on metal grew louder. Fry held his breath, but whoever it was didn't break stride when they passed. Unable to resist, Fry opened the door a crack and stole a glance at the figure that was retreating down the corridor. What he saw made his heart leap. Shouting in surprise and joy, he leapt from his hiding place and bounded out into the hallway. The figure stopped and turned around, her one eye swiveling to stare right through him.

"Leela!" He yelled, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear. "I can't believe it!" He tried to embrace her. "God it's good to see you. I-" Suddenly he was lying on the floor with one of Leela's knees planted firmly on his neck. Fry couldn't breathe. He looked up at the PE Captain, terrified.

"Why?" He managed between gasps.

The butt of Leela's weapon connected solidly with the side of his skull.


	9. Chapter 9

"Ungh, my head." Fry moaned and sat up. "Where am I?" His whole head was throbbing, and for some reason, the whole left side of his face was sore. Without thinking, he reached up and touched his cheek, and was rewarded with a jolt of pain.

Fry forced himself to stand. In front of him was a shimmering, yellow force field. It gave off a hum like a fluorescent light. Beyond that was a dimly lit, seemingly unoccupied compartment about ten meters square. A half dozen small handheld weapons were mounted on a rack on the far wall, a couple meters from the only doorway. The ex-delivery boy scratched his head. How had he ended up here? He couldn't quite remember. _Something about sneaking into Momcorp? God my head hurts_. He turned around and began to pace, but froze after only a single step. There, at the other end of the room, were Leela, Bender, and Amy, all dressed in grey uniforms.

When Fry recognized Leela, he took an immediate step backward and instinctively raised his arms protectively across his chest. "What- what are you doing here?" He managed. His eyes were fixed on the PE Captain, waiting for her to make the slightest move against him.

Nothing happened. Leela didn't respond. Actually, Fry realized, she seemed to just be staring off into space, like she didn't even know he was there.

When a few seconds had passed and Leela still made no move to attack him, Fry took a couple of steps forward. "Uhh, Leela?" He tried again. Still no answer. Fry's fear was replaced by a combination of confusion and worry.

"Amy? Bender? Can you guys hear me?" The robot and the intern just continued to stare blindly at the wall beyond the force field. Fry crouched in front of Leela and waved his hand in front of her face, but she made no sign.

"They won't answer you." Someone declared. Fry just about jumped out of his skin before turning to find Walt standing in front of the force field, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Who are you?!" Fry demanded, balling his fists. "What did you do to them?!"

Walt laughed at the fury in Fry's voice. "What, don't you remember me?" He asked, feigning hurt feelings. "I helped you and that idiot nephew of yours save the world from an army of rebelling robots, remember?"

Fry had to think about that for a minute. He seemed to remember something about robots taking over the world. _Oh, that's right._ "You mean in that dream I had?"

"What? No! Last Valentine's Day, when Mother- Oh, forget it." Walt made an irritated noise and shook his head. "My name is Walt. As for your friends, I've just ensured that they'll stick around long enough to pay off the debt they owe me."

Fry took a look over his shoulder at his old coworkers. None of them had moved even an inch. _Debt?_ He wondered. "Why can't they hear me?" Fry asked.

"Oh, they can hear you." Walt assured. "They just can't answer. That's the trouble with mind control; You can still see, hear, and feel everything around you. You know exactly what it is that you're doing. You just can't do anything about it." Walt met Leela's blank gaze. He sneered at her.

Fry tried to imagine what that would be like. _Leela's gonna be pissed._ "But why?" He demanded.

"Because they ruined everything!" Walt snapped. "Mother put me in charge of the Cardenian Moss operation, and if she discovers that the whole crop has been destroyed, she'll probably kill me. The only way to make sure that she never finds out is to hide all the evidence, and that includes _them_." Walt gestured at the PE Crew. "Until this whole thing blows over, they'll work for me. I put Ms. Wong and that bending robot to work on the spaceship assembly line, and Captain Leela makes an excellent security system- as you discovered earlier." He chuckled. "I still haven't decided where I'm going to place you."

"Wait, me?" Fry's face went pale. "You're going to brain-control me too?!"

Walt frowned. "You haven't left me much choice." He retorted. "You snuck into Momcorp Headquarters looking for the Planet Express Crew, and I can't let you go now that you've found them." Without waiting for a response, Walt turned and walked to the weapon rack that was mounted on the far wall. He picked up one of the weapons and returned to the force field. He twisted a knob on the weapon and pointed it at Fry's chest.

"Now, it takes a few minutes for the neural suggester to interface with the brain and start transmitting delta brain waves, and I can't have you ripping the device out before it takes over your motor functions, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to stun you."

Walt reached for the force field's control panel, and the field vanished. Fry put his hands up and began backing slowly away. "Now hold on just a second." He pleaded. "Why don't we just stop and talk about this for a bit like two grown up-" Walt shot him square in the stomach, and Fry was out cold yet again.

Fry awoke with a start to find himself sprawled facedown on the floor of the cell. His head still hurt from the blow dealt it by Leela's rifle, and his neck itched a little, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. _But am I a zombie?_ Fry wondered. He didn't feel like he was under the influence of mind control. But then again, he wasn't sure exactly what that was supposed to feel like. _Well, only one way to find out_. He tried to sit up.

His body did what he told it to. _Ok, that was easy_. He thought. _What about_… He told his right hand to move, and had no trouble putting it up in front of his face. His fingers obeyed the little random orders he gave them.

_What's going on? I thought my brain was supposed to be under Walt's control!_ The itch at his neck began to bother him, and he scratched it absently. His finger found something on his skin that hadn't been there before. At first he thought it was a mole, but it felt solid, as though it were made of metal.

There wasn't a mirror in the cell, but Fry could see a little of his reflection in the force field if he got close enough. When he squinted at the image of the thing on his neck he could make out what looked like circuitry etched into a metal disc. Hair-thin wires snaked out of the sides of the disc and disappeared into his skin. The sight of those wires penetrating into his body made Fry panic. By the time he'd thought about what the consequences might be, he'd already ripped the device off of the surface of his skin and thrown it to the floor.

Fry stood over the little disc, breathing heavily. For a minute he watched it, as if he expected it to get up and roll away under its own volition. _It didn't work._ Fry thought at last. _The mind control didn't work on me_. _Why not?_ Obviously it had worked on the PE Crew. They were still sitting in the same positions they had been in when Fry'd woken up in the cell the first time. And, now that he knew to look, he could see little metal discs on Amy and Leela's necks and on the side of Bender's head. Fry walked over to Amy and knelt down beside her. He began to reach for her disc, but Amy jerked away at the last moment.

The intern's sudden movement startled Fry, and he withdrew his hand. "Amy?" He asked uncertainly. "Did _you_ do that?"

When Amy didn't respond, Fry reached for the disc again, only to have her jerk away again_. The mind control thing must be making her do that_. Fry guessed after a third attempt. He waited for a few seconds and then grabbed at the disc with an abruptness and speed that didn't give Amy a chance to react. The ex-delivery boy's fingertips grabbed ahold of the device attached to Amy's neck. He just barely managed to duck out of the way of the intern's fist as it sailed by his head, and then yanked on the disc. It came away from her skin with a sound that was reminiscent of Velcro. Amy gasped and crumpled to the floor.

"Amy, are you ok?" Fry was getting worried; the intern had been out cold for ten minutes now. Ripping a device that was hardwired into her brain out of her neck didn't seem as good an idea as it had earlier. He shook her again, his panic starting to mount. To his immense relief, she began to stir.

The intern blinked a couple of times, and groaned. Then she froze. "Wait a second. Did I just do that?" She asked aloud. When she heard the sound of her own voice in her ears she let out a cry of joy and leapt to her feet, the nausea of being disconnected from the neural suggester completely forgotten. Tears began to fill the corners of her eyes as she danced about the small compartment.

Fry was horrified; Amy was making enough noise to attract any guards within a ten-mile radius. "Amy wait!" He pleaded, grabbing her wrist as she practically bounced past. "They'll hear you!"

Amy sobered up instantly when the meaning of Fry's words sank in. She stopped in her tracks, and the two of them waited nervously for someone to appear at the force field. No one did.

Both Fry and Amy let out a sigh of relief. Fry let himself lean against one of the cell walls. When he looked at Amy again she was scratching the side of her nose. "You have no idea how long I've needed to do that" She explained when she caught him looking at her.

"You okay?" Fry asked, still worried that destroying the brain control device might have been unwise. "You know. Does everything work the way it should?"

"I think so." Amy replied. "My neck's just a little sore." She put a hand to her neck and, feeling something strange, she pinched it between her thumb and index finger and pulled. Whatever it was, it was loose, so she kept pulling. A few seconds later, three feet of gossamer wire lay spooled in her right hand. Fry thought he was going to be sick.

"Should we try and free Leela and Bender?" Amy asked eventually.

That was the question, all right. He'd pulled the mind control thing off of Amy first for a reason- he wasn't sure he wanted to have to face either Leela or Bender. On the other hand, he'd risked his life to get this far, and it wasn't like he and Amy were going to escape by themselves.

"Yeah, I guess we ought to." He said reluctantly. The trouble was that Amy had tried to hit him when he'd attempted to remove the disc attached to her neck. That meant the mind control gizmos were trying to protect themselves. Amy wasn't a good enough fighter to be much of a threat, but Bender would be able to crush Fry or Amy's spines if he got in a lucky punch, and Leela… Fry gulped at the thought of what she would probably do to them.

Amy seemed to be following the same line of thought, because she hesitated for a moment and then said. "Uh… Why don't we try Bender?"

Fry agreed, and the two of them walked over to the bending robot, who was still staring off into space. If he hadn't known better, Fry would have said Bender wasn't on line at all. Amy bent down to get a closer look at the metal disc that was seemingly welded to the side of Bender's head. There weren't any of the little white wires that connected the discs to their human hosts.

"How're we going to get that off him?" Fry asked. "It looks stuck on there pretty good."

Amy stood, and grabbing Bender's right arm in her hands said cheerfully "Like this." She yanked at the robot's appendage and it easily came away from his frame. When Bender didn't react, Amy raised the metal limb over her head and, uttering something in Chinese, brought the makeshift club down hard against the neural suggester. The force of the blow caused Bender to slump over on his side. His head toppled off his shoulders and rolled away across the floor.

"Hey, chump! Do you mind?" Bender's head asked with characteristic sarcasm from the far corner of the cell. "Getting dings out of the side of my head isn't easy, you know!"

Fry couldn't help but grin at the sound of his old roommate's voice, and his reservations vanished- at least for the moment. "Sorry, Bender." He said, retrieving the robot's head.

"Yeah, well… Don't let it happen again." Bender's headless body got to its feet and snatched its missing arm from Amy's grasp. As Fry screwed the robot's head back into place, Bender's body reattached the arm.

"Everything hooked up alright?" Fry asked when Bender had seemingly finished putting himself back together.

"Yeah, I think so." The robot replied. "Nothing a spot welder won't fix."

"Good!" Fry replied enthusiastically. "Because we need your help." He nodded in the direction of Leela

Fry nodded at Amy, and the intern positioned herself to Leela's left, right at the edge of the cyclops's field of view. Fry then moved to Leela's right and, with another nod, the two humans knelt down. That was the signal for Bender to approach, which the bending robot reluctantly did. When Bender was ready, Fry and Amy took hold of the PE Captain's arms and hauled downward, forcing Leela into a crouch. Simultaneously, Bender extended his arms and gripped Leela's neural suggester with two of his metal fingers. The idea was to pin Leela to the ground so that she had no time to react when Bender pried the disc off of her. It had seemed like a great plan when they'd been whispering it to each other on the far side of the room.

Leela easily broke free of Amy's grasp and, after karate-chopping Fry in the face and ducking away from Bender's extended arm, rolled forward and leapt to her feet. She whirled and went into a defensive position.

Fry's head swam from the blow, but he was able to stand. Holding his arms out, palms up, he took a few steps in Leela's direction. "Leela, it's me, Fry." He said with a reassuring voice. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to help."

"Uh, Fry. I don't think that's a good idea."

Fry took another step. "Come on, Leela. Fight it." He pleaded. Another step put him within arm's reach of the PE Captain. He held out a hand to her. "Please, just let me-"

Leela grabbed his arm and, twisting it, spun him around and pinned it behind his back. Fry winced. "Okay, so that didn't work quite like I'd hoped."

It was time. This was her one and only chance. Leela mustered every little bit of strength that she'd been saving and, steeling herself, focused all of that energy on one simple command. The parts of her mind still under her control flooded her neural pathways with the order. The neural suggester, distracted with the external threat, momentarily felt its control slipping away. The order got through.

_Don't screw this up, Fry._ She prayed.

The grip on Fry's arm loosened. For once in his life, he actually reacted fast enough. Without turning around, he reached up and felt his fingers close around the disc on Leela's neck. He pulled.

Leela's body collapsed into a heap. Alarmed, Fry rushed to her side and kneeling, put a hand on her shoulder. He shook her gently. "Leela?" He asked, more than a little worried. For a few moments there was no response beyond the rhythmic rise and fall of the cyclops' breath as she breathed. Fry was just about to shake her again when her eye fluttered open. When their eyes met he felt a wave of relief wash over him.

"…And that's how I ended up here." Fry concluded. Silence descended between the four of them as his words sank in. He'd told them the whole story, starting from the morning that he'd defrosted Chelsea, and concluding with his delighted surprise upon finding Leela walking through Momcorp headquarters, which had become just surprise when she had bashed him in the head. Now he waited nervously for their response. The last time he'd seen Leela, they'd been at each other's throats. Could she still be angry with him? And who knew what Bender had come to think of him, disappearing without saying goodbye as he'd done? For the first time it occurred to him that maybe his former friends hadn't wanted the help that he'd tried to give them.

He found himself watching Leela, waiting for her to make some sign. She had her arms crossed, and she was standing so that most of her weight was on her left foot. She was staring at the floor, unwilling or unable to meet his gaze. Finally, Fry could take it no longer.

"Leela, are you alri-"

"I'm sorry." Leela said.

The rest of Fry's sentence died off in his throat. "W- what?"

Leela lifted her head to look right at him. Her face was somehow tight, as if she was firmly clamping down on something trying to escape inside her.. "I'm sorry." She repeatedstiffly. "For kicking your ass." Abruptly she crossed her arms and turned away from him, leaving Fry to stare dumbfounded at the back of her head.

Fry turned to Amy for help. Their eyes met, and a silent communication passed between them. The intern shrugged apologetically. Fry understood the message. Leela was still angry at him for the argument that they had had in his apartment so long ago. She hadn't beaten him up yet though- well, at least, not on purpose. And she was talking to him. Those were both good signs. Maybe she'd forgive him eventually. Maybe.

"Yo, organ piles, can we cut this emotion crap and start worrying about some more important issues? Like the fact that we're still stuck in this prison cell?" That was Bender, of course. Not for the first time, Fry was silently thankful for Bender's impatience with human emotional drama. It had often proved an excellent means of interrupting and dispelling an awkward situation.

"Bender's right." Fry said. "That Walt guy might be back at any moment to stick those disc things in our heads, and he probably wont let me pull them off you guys again." He paused for a moment, aware that his next words had to be chosen carefully. This had been his rescue mission up until the point that he'd pulled the disc off of Leela's neck, but he knew- as did everyone present- that it would be foolish for anyone other than Leela to be in charge now that she was free to do so. But he couldn't look like he was just dumping all the responsibility on her either. Normally she wouldn't mind, but she was already mad at him, no need to make it worse. "We need to find a way out of this cell. You guys have been here for a long time. Leela, do you think there's any way out of here?" _I so hope that was the right thing to say._

Leela still had her back turned to Fry, so the only reaction the redhead could detect was a slight slump of the shoulders and what might have been a sigh. A second or two passed, and then Leela turned back to face the group. "Alright." She said, her voice ringing with in t distinct, confident tone of command that she had. "Let's do this." For a split second she looked in Fry's direction, and a corner of her mouth turned up in the barest hint of a smile. Fry grinned lopsidedly.

"It's no use." Leela said, relaxing her grip on the pair of pliers that she gripped in her right hand. After two hours of poking and prying at the metal panels that lined the cell with a screwdriver that had been stashed in Bender's chest cabinet, Leela had finally managed to gain access to an interior section of wall. She and Amy had surveyed the nest of multicolored wires that had been exposed, looking for a circuit that might control the forcefield that kept them trapped. They'd narrowed their choice to three candidates, a red, a yellow, and a white wire, but cutting them had seemingly done nothing. They had then decided to try and reach the computer chip that controlled the forcefield. Unfortunately, when they'd finally located it, they'd discovered that it was protected by a cage of **unbendium**. Even Bender wasn't strong enough to bend bars like those, and anything they stuck through the bars- including the pair of pliers that Leela had found lying atop the screwdriver- wasn't long enough to reach the chip.

"It's okay, Leela." Amy assured her. "Your hands are just too big and masculine to fit through the bars." Leela narrowed her eye her, but the smile that Amy gave her was completely innocent.

:"This bends." Bender said decisively. "Why don't we just wait until that weaselly-looking human shows up again and rush him? We'll use Fry to shield us from the gunfire a human shield, ri

Fry pretended he hadn't heard that last remark. "Uhh Leela? Amy? Do you guys have any other ideas?"

Amy shrugged and shook her head, but Leela looked thoughtful. "Hmm. Actually, Bender might be right." Fry's eyes went wide, but Leela wasn't finished. "Right about waiting for Walt, I mean." Fry breathed a sigh of relief. "If we put those mind control things back on our necks we can make it look like we're still zombies. Then, when Walt shows up to let us out, we'll beat the tar out of him."

Fry and Bender looked at each other uneasily. Amy understood what they were thinking. "Don't worry, you guys." She assured them. "The mind control things are dead. I checked." Kneeling down, she picked up one of the discs and placed it against her neck. She waited a few moments and took her hand away. The disc immediately fell to the ground.

"Hmm." Leela said. "It looks like we'll need some way to keep them stuck in place. Bender, do you have any glue in that cabinet of yours?"

"Whoa, hey wait a second." Fry protested. "You want me to glue something to my body? How come all the other times I wanted to do that you were against it?"

"Because gluing your cellphone to your hand so you would always have it with you is stupid." Leela retorted. "Well, Bender? Do you have any?"

Bender rolled his eyes, but he stuck his hand into his compartment. "What do I look like, a toolbot? Why do you fleshies bloodbags always assume I carry everything around with me? This is a small storage space, and I have lots of loot to haul around with- oh wait a minute, here it is." With a mechanical whir he pulled out a white tube. On it was marked the words 'crazy glue: made from and used by crazy people.'

Leela took the glue and examined it. "It says it can be removed 'almost painlessly' if applied to the skin. Hmm, I wonder why almost is written in quotes?" There was a beat. "Oh well, it'll have to do. Everyone find a neural suggester and put a drop of glue on it. Try to stick it exactly where it was originally."

"What then?" Fry asked.

"We wait." she said.


	10. Chapter 10

Leela felt her stomach grumble again. It had been complaining to her for two hours now; the guard that usually came by with their dinner had never appeared. She and Amy hadn't eaten for almost twelve hours now, and her seemingly supercharged alien metabolism was demanding to be fed.

Even worse, there were other, more private bodily functions that she'd really rather not show in front of Bender. _Where is that damned guard?_ She wondered. Usually someone would come by periodically and let them out one at a time to use the restroom or take a shower, but not a single person had entered the cell block since Walt had appeared to implant a neural suggester on Fry's neck. That had been almost eight hours ago.

"Leela, how much longer is this gonna take?" Fry whined. Leela chose to ignore him; he knew full well that she had no way to know when they'd get a chance to make their move. Complaining was just his way of dealing with the boredom and stress, and replying with a sarcastic comment would just end up with her angry and him sulking. She didn't really feel the desire to deal with either at the moment.

Amy, however, decided to take the opportunity to voice her own concerns when her Captain remained silent. "He has a point, Leela. We haven't seen anybody for hours. If somebody doesn't show up soon with some moisturizing cream, I might not make it through the night."

"Yeah," Bender agreed, "and hairball over there looks like his coolant tank is about to rupture." The robot gestured at Fry, who was sitting on the floor with his legs tightly crossed, a pained expression on his face.

"I'm… fine." Fry said in a voice that clearly belied how much he was suffering. Leela couldn't help but feel a little guilty when he looked up at her and risked a smile. She had assumed that he had just been complaining because he was bored, but he wasn't bored, he was miserable. Unfortunately, there wasn't a thing that could be done about it, trapped as they were behind the shimmering yellow forcefield.

"Sorry, Fry." Leela offered gently, "but there's no way to know when we'll get a chance to escape. Actually, we should all probably try and get some sleep. We need to keep our energies up, since it looks like we're not getting anything to eat tonight. Just make sure to lie on your backs. That's the way the neural suggesters always made us sleep, after they picked a random place for us to lie down."

There was a bit of grumbling from her crew at the mention of food, but they all eventually lay down to try and follow her advice. Leela couldn't help noticing Bender putting on a big show of 'just happening' to end up lying next to his old roommate. It was adorable actually, in a pathetic sort of way.

"Psst. Leela, wake up!" It was Amy's voice, and it sounded urgent. One of the guards must have finally shown up, then. "Shh!" She whispered back as she slowly opened her eye. "We're not supposed to be able to talk, rememb-" Leela cut herself off. She couldn't see any guards, or anything else for that matter. Someone had turned off the lights. _No, not just the lights._ She realized with a start. The forcefield was gone as well. Through some miraculous stroke of luck they were suddenly free. Unfortunately, in her experience, miracles always came with a catch.

"I have a really bad feeling about this." Fry whispered, and Leela silently agreed.

"Okay, here's the plan." Fry, Bender, and Amy stood together by the entrance to their cell, all of them facing the door to the facility beyond, while Leela paced back and forth in front of them. A pool of yellow-white light followed her across the room as Bender's eyes, which apparently also served as flashlights, tracked her movements. She held two stunners in her hands, and as she strode past Amy she thrust one of them into the intern's grasp. "Amy and I will each take a stunner." There had been five weapons in the locker, but she wasn't about to trust Fry or Bender with one.

"Bender," she continued, blinking in annoyance when she accidentally looked directly into the robot's illuminated eyes, "you'll be responsible for bending open any locked doors that get in the way." Bender, for once, did not complain. Any plan that involved bending was a good one, at least by his standards.

"What about me?" Fry asked eagerly, legs now uncrossed. "What's my job gonna be?"

Leela hesitated for a moment. "Uhh, well Fry, you'll- Umm…" Her mind raced as she tried to come up with something. _What can I give him that will keep him out of the way, but won't hurt his feelings?_ She thought instinctively, momentarily forgetting that she was supposed to be angry at him.Her eye settled on a small medical kit that was stashed in the same place as the stunners._ Aha!_ "I'll tell you what Fry, why don't you be in charge of keeping this safe?" She gently handed him the kit, as if it were extremely delicate. _That should make him feel useful_. She thought. _And it can't hurt to have a medkit around, anyway._

Fry took the kit and clutched it protectively to his chest, his face hardening into a grim determination to let nothing, absolutely _nothing,_ take the medkit from him

"Alright then, everybody ready?" Leela looked from one face to another. She could barely make out their faces in the shadows beyond the pool of light cast by Bender's eyes, but she heard no sounds of dissent. Turning, she walked to the door that led to the interior of the Momcorp building. She'd walked around the building countless times as a zombie; she knew the layout by heart. Why, then, did the idea of opening the door give her such a feeling of plunging into the unknown? _Maybe I've been locked up for so long, I've grown used to it?_ She wondered. But that didn't make sense. No, something about this while situation didn't seem right. The loss of power, the fact that there was no sign of the guards, the eerie silence of the building… Something was seriously not right, and a cold shiver ran down her spine as she reached for the keypad that would open the door. She knew with a sudden certainty that there was something on the other side of that door. Something bad. Leela started to pull her hand back before catching herself. _What the hell am I doing? _she wondered, furious with herself for her weakness. _It's just a stupid door. Get ahold of yourself, Turanga._ She pushed a button on the control panel.

The door whooshed open, and Leela saw… nothing. The light from Bender's eyes passed over Leela's right shoulder, flooding the corridor beyond. Leela motioned for Bender to look left and right down the length of the hallway, which he did. It was seemingly empty. If Leela hadn't known better, she would have said that everyone had just turned the lights out and gone home for the day. They wouldn't have turned off the forcefields in their prison wing when they left, though.

Of course, none of that really mattered. A get out of jail free card, regardless of how strange the circumstances in which it was presented, was still a get out of jail free card, at least, according to the popular game of Momopoly. Wanting to waste no more time, Leela gestured for her crew to follow her down the hall in the direction that she knew was the exit. Fry, Amy, and even Bender stayed close. She could see it in their faces that they also felt that something was not quite right.

When they walked by one of the windows, Amy muttered- "Umm, hey guys? Come look at this."

Fry, Leela, and Bender stopped and walked back to stand next to the intern. "I don't get it." Fry said after looking out into the blackness that was outside the window. "I don't see anything."

Leela nodded, and another chill shot down her spine. "Exactly. It's the middle of the night in New New York City. Where are all the lights?"

The city was as dark as space itself. The PE crew met no resistance as they snuck through Momcorp headquarters. No alarms went off, no guards tried to stop them. They'd literally been able to walk right out of the main entrance to the building. Now they stood uncontested on the street right outside the front door, unsure of what to make of the eerie darkness that surrounded them. Nothing moved. Humans, aliens, robots, even the owls were mysteriously absent from the streets. Their were none of the omnipresent hovercars flying overhead, or even parked by the curb.

_Looks like everyone left in a hurry._ Leela thought. I _wonder where they all went?_

"Leela?" Fry asked in a whisper, voice shaking. "What's going on?"

_Yes, that's the question alright. _ "I don't know yet, Fry." She replied in as confident tone as she could muster, "but let's not panic until we know more." She turned to the blob of darkness-within-darkness that she thought was Bender. Not wanting to be noticed until she knew what was happening, Leela had instructed Bender to turn off his eyelights when the PE crew had come outside. Now that she'd been in the darkness for a few minutes her eye was beginning to adjust. If she squinted real hard she could almost make out her friends' faces in the dim starlight. She'd always wondered if her larger iris gave her an advantage in night vision over humans.

"Bender," she said, "the three of us can't see very well in the dark, so we're going to need you to be a lookout while we head back to Planet Express." That seemed the logical place to go. It was familiar and stood the best chance of providing shelter from whatever had driven everyone away. And it would provide answers, assuming there was still anyone there. "Everyone else, stay as close together as possible. We can't risk turning on a light and giving ourselves away until we know what we're dealing with, so be quiet and don't get separated, okay?" Leela's vision had improved enough by this point to see her friends nod affirmative. "Alright." She whispered. "Let's go."

"This way! Hurry!" The decaying sewer tunnel came alight with the pale green, flickering discharge from a gauss rifle. A bolt of deadly electricity sizzled by Leela's head and slammed into a tunnel wall, blasting chunks of centuries-old concrete into the sludgy water that ran through the pipe. Leela rolled and turned, entered a crouch, and returned fire. Fry, who had been a couple of steps behind, ran past, face frozen in the same fear that had filled Amy's eyes during those last moments, just as she'd disappeared from sight.

Another bolt of electricity came shrieking toward them. Leela ducked out of the way just it time; it impacted the sludge not ten feet away. _Thank god whatever's in this water doesn't conduct electricity._ Leela thought.

After squeezing off a couple more shots, Leela stood and ran after Fry's receding back. Silently she swore to herself. Amy and Bender were gone, but she would not lose a third friend today.

They'd made it maybe a quarter mile from Momcorp before Leela's feeling that something was watching them became too strong to ignore. There seemed to be eyes all around them; she was certain of it. The four of them were walking in a line, with Bender up front leading the way. She was in the back, making sure that no one got separated. Up ahead was a large, open intersection with tall buildings overlooking it on all sides; she could just barely see it in the feeble starlight. There was nothing obviously wrong, but as they walked toward it she felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. With a few quick strides she caught up with Bender as he entered the intersection. "Bender, wait!" She hissed as the robot stepped out into the open. As she reached out to grab hold of what passed for his shoulder, the world exploded in light.

There was a flash like a supernova and the intersection was suddenly cast in a harsh reddish orange. It was a flare. Leela's slammed her eye shut against the painful glare, and she heard Amy gasp. She only allowed herself a moment to adjust and then forced her eye back open, just in time to dive out of the way of incoming fire. A ball of plasma passed between her and Fry and entered the ground floor of the building that was behind them, where it buried itself into the back wall with a resounding boom. Amy screamed, and Leela waited for the next shot to give away their attacker's position. Strangely, that shot didn't come.

A few seconds passed in silence before three figures emerged from behind a low wall that ran around a store at the far end of the intersection. As the figures drew close she breathed a silent sigh of relief. They were wearing DOOP uniforms.

"Who are you?" The lead soldier- who Leela could now see was a young lieutenant- demanded, leveling his plasma weapon. "What are you doing out here?"

Leela stepped forward, and three rifles were instantly pointed at her chest. "My name is Turanga Leela, Captain of the Planet Express delivery ship." Gesturing to the others, she added "this is my crew. We were trying to find someone who could tell us what's going on"

The soldiers' eyes went wide. "You mean you don't know what's happening?" The man on the right asked incredulously.

"Damn world is coming to an end, is what." The third soldier muttered.

"Can it, Michaels." The lieutenant snapped. He regarded the PE crew for a few more moments before seemingly coming to a decision. "Well, you look like you're clean still, anyways." He shook his head. "It's a miracle that you've made it in the city this long by yourselves, and general Brannigan told us that he was 'absolutely 100 almost positive' that all of the civilians had left the city. I guess we'd better call HQ and see if we can arrange to have you evac'd."

The lieutenant gestured for the four of them to follow him toward the building with the low wall. As Michaels and the other soldier swept the surrounding area with their eyes for threats, the lieutenant guided Leela and the others into the building's front room. Leela looked around her, curious. They were in a jewelry store, but mixed in with the precious stones were ammo boxes and communications equipment. A single small lantern, turned so low that it could barely be qualified as 'on' was the only illumination.

The lieutenant walked to the cash register, leaned his rifle against a nearby wall, and reaching into a duffel bag that lay perched up against the register, pulled out a box of cigarettes. He offered one to Fry, Leela, and Amy, but they each declined. Bender, of course, was much too preoccupied with eyeing the store's merchandise to notice the offering. The lieutenant shrugged and leaned up against a display case. Bender eyed him carefully, obviously trying to judge whether the young soldier would intervene if some of the gemstones magically ended up in his chest cabinet.

"I'm lieutenant Rodriquez," the lieutenant said, after lighting a cigarette and taking a long pull. "1st company, 114th battalion. Now tell me, what the heck were you nice people all doing out here in the middle of a war zone?"

Fry scratched his head. "Uhh yeah, about that, what war are we talking about again?"

"You mean you really don't know?" Rodriguez asked. "The city has been under attack for almost 12 hours. How could you not know that?"

Leela spoke up before any of her friends said anything that would make their situation worse. Mom was the richest, most powerful, and most adorable businesswoman in the world. Claiming that they had all been locked up in some secret prison in her facility would get them laughed at. Or shot, considering that there were members of every government and military organization on her payroll. Who knew where Lieutenant Rodriguez's true loyalties lay?

"Uh, we were-" Leela's mind raced for a plausible excuse. _Crap! Where could we have been that would be cut off from everyone in the city for hours at a time? This is the 31__st__ century; we've always got access to information!_ The only thing she could think of was prison, and she wasn't about to say _that_.

"An elevator." Fry interjected. "We were stuck in an elevator when the power went out. We heard sirens and stuff, but, when we finally got the doors open, everybody was gone."

Leela couldn't help but be impressed. It was an entirely plausible scenario. She watched Rodriquez carefully to see whether or not he would buy it. He seemed to accept the explanation.

"Huh. Well, in that case, you probably should have stayed in the elevator." He exhaled a plume of acrid smoke.

"Why, what is going on here?" Leela asked, becoming a little annoyed at how long it was taking to get an explanation.

"Well, if you guys got stuck in an elevator when the city's lights went out, then I guess you already know that people all over the city were disappearing."

"No, we didn't hear anyth-" Leela elbowed Amy in the ribs. "Ow! Oh, I mean yeah, we know all about that."

Rodriquez narrowed his eyes at the weak smile that played across the intern's face, but continued his story. "Anyway, the NNYPD started to get a flood of calls about missing persons, and then they started to lose contact with whole parts of the city. It's a good thing that the Mayor called the DOOP and ordered the city evacuated when he did, because everything with a computer in it in the whole damned city went dead fifteen minutes later. Hovercars, automatic doors, traffic signals- everything. We couldn't even get DOOP fighters into the city. They fell right out of the sky."

Bender, who had been carefully edging away from the group, and toward an extremely valuable necklace that was on display at the other end of the store, couldn't help but catch the last bit of meatbag conversation. "What about all of the robots?" He demanded, casually shoving Amy out of the way to stand facing the Lieutenant. Amy tumbled to the floor, more from clumsiness than from the robot's hard shove in the small of her back.

As Fry helped Amy to her feet, Rodriguez surveyed the robot with obvious distaste. Leela wondered whether the man didn't like robots, or just this one in particular. She couldn't fault him for the latter prejudice, she decided.

"Most of the robots made it out okay." Rodriguez grunted. "Most everyone else got out of the city too." Leela had assumed as much. It was the only explanation for the fact that all of the vehicles were missing from the streets. "There were a lot that didn't though." he added.

"Why? What killed them?" Leela asked, confused. "We didn't see any signs of a fight. Is it a virus? But then why did you shoot at us?"

Lieutenant Rodriguez shook his head. "No, it's no virus, I can tell you that much. Viruses don't carry gauss rifles." There was a beat. "Well, except for the Paramecia of Phage III."

Before Rodriguez could continue, a brilliant red-orange light, seemingly as intense as the noonday sun to Leela's dark-accustomed eye, exploded outside the jewelry store window. The whump whump whump of plasma rifles echoed through the open doorway, along with a sharp crackling noise that Leela did not recognize.

The radio that Rodriguez wore at his belt sprang to life. Apparently these radios didn't contain computer chips. "Sir, you'd better get out here." said still-anonymous soldier, who was standing guard behind the low wall in front of the store with Michaels, said nervously. With a final hiss of static, the radio cut off.

The lieutenant and the PE Crew ran from the store and crouched behind the wall that Michaels and the other soldier were using as cover. A bolt of what looked like lightning sprang into existence somewhere beyond the far end of the intersection, blasted its way over their heads, and disappeared into a second story window. Leela could smell the ozone from the bolt's passage. It took a moment for Leela's eye to adjust to the light from the DOOP flare, but what she finally could see again, she felt her blood run cold. An army was marching toward her; there had to be 50 of them, whoever _they_ were. They were mostly humans, though there were a few robots. _No aliens, though._ Leela realized. Some sort of separatist movement? She wondered. Right now it didn't much matter though. The important thing was that they were each armed with some kind of weird weapon that apparently shot bolts of electricity. Gauss guns, Lieutenant Rodriguez had called them. And against that, there were three DOOP soldiers, herself, and her three friends, and giving a weapon to Fry or Bender might actually tilt the odds toward the bad guys. Five against fifty. Even Zapp Brannigan would probably have realized that they were royally boned.

"Alright, so what's the plan?" Leela whispered into the lieutenant's ear. Rodriguez lowered his rifle for a moment to address her. "The plan is for us to do our jobs, and for you four to get the hell out of here." He said firmly. All the while there was a constant stream of gauss bolts screaming over the top of the wall that was now their only shelter. Leela, used to being in charge, began to argue, but Rodriguez cut him off. "Look," he said, "Until I get orders that say otherwise, I'm in charge here." A particularly large explosion echoed off the nearby skyscrapers. "I received instructions from General Brannigan himself that this building must be protected at all costs. The federal velour depository is on the third floor, and that, for reasons that I was told are on a strictly need-to-know basis, it is of the utmost strategic importance. I was ordered to parachute in here and guard it with my life, if necessary."

"But, you don't stand a chance!" Leela protested.

Michaels snorted while he finished reloading his weapon. "Ya don't say?" he said, dripping sarcasm. He muttered something else, but it was lost over the loud report of his rifle.

"Look, I don't have time to argue with you. Now, my men and I will try to give you some covering fire while you three- hey, where's the robot?" Bender sauntered out of the jewelry store, busily shoving something into his chest cabinet. "-while you four retreat through the building's back door. Take the plasma rifle that's sitting on the ground over there; its previous owner doesn't need it anymore."

Leela reached out and grabbed the weapon. "I still think this is wrong." She said. "We can't just leave you here for… whatever those are."

"You can, and you will." Rodriguez replied. "Now get the hell out of here." Without another word, he turned away, brought his head and his weapon over the top of the wall, and started blasting away at something downrange.

Sensing that further argument was useless, Leela motioned for her friends to move.


	11. Chapter 11

Leela trained the business end of her plasma rifle at Walt's face

Leela trained the business end of her plasma rifle at Walt's face. Every fiber of her being screamed at her for vengeance, and it took all of her willpower to keep herself from removing her weasel-faced tormentor's head. "Well, well, looky what we found here. You have about ten seconds to explain what you're doing here before I shove this plasma rifle down your throat."

Walt was still lying on the ground. He wasn't a skilled fighter, and Leela's attack had knocked the wind out of him. It took him a few moments to gather the energy to stand, dust himself off, and face the PE Captain. "I'm here for the same reason you are." He said, and Leela couldn't help but think that his voice made him sound like a giant rat. "I was trying to find somewhere safe to hide."

Of course, Leela didn't buy that for a second. Apparently, neither did Fry. "Then why were you following us?" the redhead asked, crossing his arms.

"My brothers and I heard the noise from that fight you were just in, and we went to see what was going on. Then we saw you running away from the shooting, and I decided to follow you, since you seemed to know where you were going. I thought you might know of somewhere that was safe."

Leela's eye narrowed. "And what, you thought we'd share a hiding place with you out of the goodness of our hearts?" She laughed. Of course he hadn't. She knew full well what his plan would have been: sneak in, wait until their guard was down, and then kill them all and take over the hiding place. It wouldn't have worked; Planet Express would have immediately alerted her if the building's security systems had detected an unknown career chip on the premises while the building was on lockdown. But still, the audacity of it all… "Oh, and you can tell your two brothers to come out now. I can see Ignar's head peaking around the corner of that building."

Walt turned and nodded at the shadows by the entrance to the alleyway. Walt's brothers, looking dirty, bruised, and just plain miserable, shuffled into the pool of light cast by Bender's eyes. They both looked at Leela and then quickly looked away. _They're intimidated by me._ She realized with even more satisfaction than she would have expected. _I guess they're not so tough without their giant spaceships, private armies, and truckloads of cash._

Leela found herself facing a difficult situation. She was facing someone who would try to kill her at the first opportunity, but was completely unarmed. She couldn't shoot him right there in cold blood, no matter how enticing the idea was. Neither could she take prisoners or tie him and his brothers up and leave them to be killed by the things roaming the city. The only option she could think of was to scare him so badly that he would never want to cross her again.

"You're not gonna kill them, are you?" Fry murmured, staring at her uncertainly, almost pleadingly.

"No," she whispered, "Not yet"—she amended, hurriedly correcting herself in case Walt could overhear them.

"Guys?" She said. "You three take Larry and Ignar over there outside the alley. Keep an eye on them. Walt and I are going to have a little chat… _Alone_." There was enough malice in her voice to make Fry and Bender exchange nervous glances, but Walt didn't seem particularly impressed. Larry and Ignar made no attempts to protest, however, when Fry and Bender each grabbed one of them by the shoulder and marched them away.

When the group was out of earshot, Leela lowered the rifle. Her trigger finger itched terribly; she didn't want to tempt fate. Instead, she crossed her arms and eyed the short, balding man that was going to end up costing her hundreds of dollars in additional psychotherapy. She fumed inwardly. The sessions about Zapp Brannigan alone had forced her to give up her SCUBA vacation touring San Diego.

"I should kill you for what you did to my friends and me." She stated almost casually, hoping to throw Walt off balance.

Walt seemed to relax a little, now that he wasn't staring down the barrel of a loaded weapon. He brought his hands up to his chest and interlocked his fingers. When he replied, he had that signature weasel grin on his face that had almost driven Leela mad. "But you won't." he countered.

Anger flashed behind Leela's eye, and her grip tightened momentarily on her rifle, but she soon regained control. She sighed, defeated. "No, I guess not." She admitted. "I will tell you this, though." She added, leaning toward him until her face was only mere inches from his, "If I ever see you come near me or anyone I care about ever again, I will personally break each and every bone in your twisted little body. And that's after I tell Mom that you let her whole Moss crop go up in flames. You got that?"

Before Walt could reply, there was a high pitched, feminine scream from outside the alley. Leela recognized it at once. It was Bender. She hesitated for a moment, not sure what to do about her captive. She settled for giving him one final threatening look. "Remember what we talked about." She said, and raced toward the mouth of the alley.

She wasn't prepared for the sight that awaited her. A swarm of humans and robots adorned with some kind of strange, mechanical suit were marching rigidly down the street. Wires, hoses, and circuits of unknown purpose covered large sections of the humans' exposed flesh. Each carried a very large gauss rifle. Fry, Bender, and Amy were retreating toward her down the length of the alley. Larry and Ignar were nowhere to be seen. As Leela watched, Amy tripped over a crack in the pavement and fell to the ground. Before she could get up again, a dozen pairs of hands had grabbed hold of her arms and legs. The intern screamed.

"Amy!" Leela yelled, raising her weapon. She didn't pull the trigger. It was too dark; she couldn't fire without risking hitting Amy by mistake. Fry and Bender were still scrambling down the alley, and Leela suddenly found herself standing alone against an army of… whatever they were. _There's too many of them_, she realized. _There's no way I can fight all of them and win._ Only one option existed, difficult as it might be. She cursed loudly. Turning, she ran after her two remaining friends, shoving Walt, who was seemingly frozen in fear, out of the way as she passed.

The alley was a dead end. Fry and Bender had their backs to the far wall. Leela leveled her plasma rifle at them. "Out of the way!" she ordered. The robot and the ex-delivery boy jumped aside just in time. Leela emptied an entire battery clip into the flimsy brick wall, leaving a gaping hole. She didn't even pause to let the dust settle. "Come on, you two!" She ordered before disappearing into the interior of the building.

"But what about Amy? We can't just leave her!" Fry pleaded.

"We can't do anything for her just now. Now move!"

For the next half hour, Leela, Fry, and Bender had fled through the streets of New New York. Eventually they had taken to the sewers in the hopes of losing their pursuers in the maze of underground tunnels. Somewhere along the way, Bender had fallen behind, just for a moment. By the time Leela had realized it, he had been taken.

Now it was just her and Fry. The irony of it struck her. Twenty-four hours earlier she would have sooner shot herself in the foot than stay in the same room with her old coworker, but now here she was, running for her life, and he was the only one that was still with her. Even more confusing, she couldn't quite bury the feeling of relief that he was there. She had some emotional baggage to sort when this was all over with; she knew that. Not quite therapy, fortunately. But, as the beam of electrons that hit the ceiling two meters from her face reminded her, now was not the time for emotional reflection.

Eventually Leela made the decision to leave the sewers. They were not losing their pursuers, and they would never get out of the city if they stayed below ground. When they managed to gain a small lead, Leela took her chance. She directed Fry up a ladder, and the two of them emerged in a large, open construction lot. The manhole cover made an alarming clang as Fry hauled it back into place.

"Fry, for Asimov's sake, be more careful!" Leela hissed at him from over his shoulder, and immediately regretted it. Fry was doing his best, and she knew it. She knew how her mind worked; she needed to vent, to focus her anger and frustration on something, and Fry served as a means to do that. It wasn't fair to him though, and she couldn't help but feel a little bad when he gave her a sideways look telling her that he knew she was using him as a release valve. She would have to remember to apologize later. There wasn't time for that now.

The lot they were in was enormous. As of yet, it wasn't much more than a few big piles of metal beams and a foundation, but Leela could immediately tell that the structure was going to be impressive when finished. _I'll bet this is where they're building that new, state of the art deathball_ arena. She thought.

It was hard to move quietly through the construction site and still make any forward progress. The terrain was rough, and littered with everything from steel cables to gravel to discarded fast food containers that emitted foul odors and tried to scurry away when Leela stepped on them. _If only it weren't so damned dark_. She complained to herself.

And of course, proving once again that you should be careful what you wish for lest you be unlucky enough to get it, lights all over the construction yard immediately turned themselves on. Leela instinctively dove into one of the nearby ten foot long sections of sewer pipe that were awaiting installation. Fry, of course, reacted much too slowly. By the time it occurred to him that he should have been busily making himself invisible, a hundred pairs of eyes had seen him.

A mob assembled itself around the two fugitives. Leela couldn't get a very good view of what was going on without risking exposing herself, but she could see that a crowd of figures carrying gauss rifles had formed a ring around them. Leela waited for them to finish the two of them off, but they just stood there. Finally, a dark-haired figure detached itself from the mob and walked toward Fry. Leela heard Fry gasp. The person that stood before them was Amy Wong… or, at least, what had once been Amy Wong.

Amy's pink sweat suit was torn in several places. Wires and thick cables emerged from the tears and vanished in a large, metal backpack that she was wearing. Metal plates and complex circuitry covered part of her face and neck and, Leela assumed, much of her body. A weak, red laser was mounted by her right eye.

"I am lo-cute-us, of Borg." Amy declared in a voice devoid of all emotion. "You will surrender, or be, like, gluh, totally assimilated. Resistance is futile, and junk."

"Umm, isn't someone going to sue you for saying that or something? I mean, that came right from TV."

_Leave it to Fry to completely miss the important issue at hand._ Leela muttered darkly.

Unexpectedly, there was a laugh from somewhere over Amy's shoulder. The sound, so completely out of place, actually made Leela start. She didn't recognize the voice, but she knew right away who it belonged to by the sudden stiffening of Fry's posture. Leela had been wondering when she was going to show up.

"I always was a big Trekkie myself." Chelsea said cheerfully as she strolled to Amy's side. "Well, when it came to Next Gen anyway. I couldn't stand Kirk."

"Chelsea?" Fry squeaked. "What are you doing here?"

Another laugh. When Chelsea answered, her voice belied none of the seriousness of the occasion. "Oh, come on Fry. You didn't really think that you'd gotten rid of me _that_ easily, did you?" When Fry's eyes darted in Amy's direction, Chelsea smiled. "Don't worry," She assured "Amy is just fine. She's just, ah, been introduced to a new way of looking at things. And, you have to admit, the metal-and-wire look suits her a lot better than that tacky pink sweatsuit."

"Let her go right now!" Fry's voice trembled a little.

"It's not that easy." Chelsea said. Leela was getting seriously weirded out by the, well, _pleasant_ was the only word for the way Chelsea was acting. There was no sign of a threat in her voice; she was talking to Fry as if they were two good friends having a quiet dinner conversation. Either she was purposely trying to throw Fry off balance, which was pretty much a waste of energy since Fry was off-balance just by nature, or she was a complete psychopath. Leela really hoped it wasn't option two; she wasn't in the mood tp deal with a cyborg ex-girlfriend of Fry's after her at the moment. An army of metal-clad zombies was bad enough.

"I didn't know who Amy was when my soldiers brought her in. She didn't tell me until after I'd assimilated her. Chelsea paused, and when she spoke again her voice was tinged with what sounded like actual regret. "If she'd just told me her name instead of cursing at me in Cantonese and telling me that my hair has split ends-"

"It was really noticeable." Locuteus interrupted, much to Leela's relief. _Amy's still in there somewhere._

"Damnit, I don't have split ends!" Chelsea muttered something under her breath in a foreign language. "Anyway, I wouldn't have put her through all that. Now that it's done though, I can't just undo it. When there's time, I'll put her back to the way she was. That'll have to wait until I finish conquering the Earth though." The last statement was made as if she was discussing cleaning up a spilled can of Slurm.

"W-what?!" Fry stammered. The only part of the redhead that Leela could see from inside the pipe was the backs of his shins, but she had no trouble picturing how his face would look as he realized what she had figured out several hours ago. The army of gauss rifle-wielding zombies was made up of drones assimilated from residents of the city. Obviously this crazy ex-girlfriend of Fry's had decided to carry through on her plans to 'improve' the human race. And be installed as its ruler, of course. _He sure can pick 'em, can't he? I just knew he couldn't handle being by himself…_

"Don't look so surprised, Fry." Chelsea was saying, the first trace of puzzlement in her voice. You already knew I was capable of this, remember? I've already tried it, after all."

Fry tried to speak, but Chelsea cut him off. "No, don't bother. I know you feel bad about leaving me behind on that spaceship in the middle of nowhere, and you think that this is somehow my way of getting back at you, that I hate you and want to get even. But I can't hate you for what you did. You are who you are; you can't help it." There was a brief pause. "Just like my mother couldn't help turning my father over to the government when she discovered what he was doing."

"Chelsea, I-" Fry started.

"No, no, let me finish." Chelsea interrupted gently. Leela couldn't see her from her vantage point, and she was having trouble picturing her in her mind's eye. This calm, almost conversational voice that she was hearing just did not fit with the army of zombified warriors that were taking over the city. "When I finally did get back to New York, or, I guess I should say, _New_ New York, I immediately went into the ruins of the old city and tracked down the gear that I'd buried in a concrete bunker for when I was unfrozen. Inside was everything I needed to being manufacturing a new army of drones. That was my original plan, you see. To build an army and take over the future. All I had to do was put on a show of being vulnerable and disoriented when I came out of the freezer tube so that no one suspected me, and then strike the moment that anyone who was paying attention decided I was harmless. I just hadn't counted on one thing." Another pause. "You."

"Me?" Fry parroted.

"Yes, you. My own experience as a child, and my father's research, taught me that humans are imperfect. We are overly emotional, stubborn, illogical, self-delusional, and too self-absorbed to work for the greater good. I learned to look down at pure humans for their glaring flaws, but then I met someone that turned those long-held beliefs on their heads. When I came out of that freezer tube, you were kind to me in a way that no one has ever been, and, as I got to know you, I realized that, in you, all of humanity's flaws are strengths. Your emotion, stubborn insistence in seeing the best in people, and innate illogic make you a far better human than me, and no amount of internal circuitry that I add to my body and mind is going to change that."

Fry seemed to digest that for a moment. Leela waited impatiently for him to ask the obvious question. For a moment she considered revealing herself and challenging this bizarre woman from the stupid ages, but she quickly decided against it. The few seconds of surprise she might earn by appearing at the right moment with plasma gun blasting away might give them a chance to escape.

"So, if you decided that people aren't as bad as you thought, then why are you trying to take over the Earth still?" Fry finally asked.

"Well, see, that's the thing." Chelsea replied a bit sadly. "I realized that my old beliefs were not quite correct. The flaws that I thought needed fixing turned out to be strengths, but there was another flaw present that I had no way to know about back then. You see, there weren't any aliens around in the good old year 2012."

"So?"

"_So_," Chelsea said with a good deal of sarcasm, "there was no way for me to know that humans would naturally intermingle with inferior life forms like aliens. It was more than I could take to see those hideous _things_ walking around the streets of the city, as if they had any more right to it than sewer rats. Then, when you were so dismayed by what I did to those… things back on the Planet Express Ship, I realized that something had to be done. People can't be allowed to believe that aliens can coexist with us. It's dangerous, and unhealthy! Aliens will influence us. They degrade us by their very existence."

By this point Leela was just about ready to jump out of her hiding place and rip Chelsea apart with her bare hands, but she forcibly restrained herself.

"But why the army of cyborgs?" Fry was asking.

"Well, I mean, there was no way I'm going to just suddenly convince people to wipe out all alien life in the universe. They have to be… persuaded." It was said as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world.

"What?!" Fry gasped. "Wipe out all alien life? Y- you can't do that! Chelsea, aliens are people too! They're no different from you, or me, or the sewer mutants!"

"Sewer mutants?" Chelsea sounded genuinely surprised. "Really? Huh. Thank you for mentioning them. They will have to go too, of course." There were some muffled voices that Leela couldn't hear. Ostensibly Chelsea was giving orders to someone to look into the truth of what Fry had just accidentally revealed. _And_ _once again Fry's big mouth leads to the demise of an entire people._ Leela thought. Then, for some strange reason, she felt a stab of fear at the idea of what Chelsea would do to the peaceful community of genetic aberrations. _Weird. Why do I care so much about a bunch of inferior genetic scum?_ It took her almost a full second to realize what her own mind had just said to her. _Oh my god._ _Did I really just think that?_ She wondered, amazed at herself. _I'm no better than she is! _Feeling simultaneously sick and horribly unclean,Leela realized that she was going to have to seriously rethink her beliefs when this was all over. Her emotional to-do list was starting to spill over

"Speaking of having to go," Chelsea said, "I can't have you wandering around through the middle of the city while I'm busily taking it over. It's dark and dangerous in here now that I've turned all of the electronics off. Someone's liable to shoot you by mistake. It's a good thing my friend Locuteus here filled me in on your situation. Imagine it, all that time I was working at Momcorp, and Leela and the rest of your friends were right there in the building, and neither of us had any idea." She chuckled. "I figured that I'd better get you cornered before you got yourself killed."

"So then you're not going to kill us?" There was a tinge of hope in Fry's voice. Leela cringed at his use of the word 'us'. Apparently it wasn't blatantly obvious that she wanted to remain undetected. Luckily, Chelsea didn't seem to catch on.

"What? No!" From Chelsea's voice it seemed as though she was genuinely surprised, and a little hurt. "You really thought I was going to kill you? Didn't you listen to what I said before, back when we were in the airlock? You're the only friend I have in the whole future, maybe the only one I've had in my entire life! You were kind and understanding, and wanted nothing in return. I would _never_ hurt you." Amazingly, there was enough emotion in Chelsea's words that Leela believed that she was telling the truth. "You did abandon me in interstellar space," Chelsea added, "But you did it out of fear. I lied to you about who I was, and you couldn't handle it. I was wrong to put you in that situation; I don't blame you for it."

"Then you'll let us go?"

Chelsea sighed. "Yes, I'll let you go. What I really want is for you to understand, but I guess that is something I can't reasonably expect... I'll have you escorted to the edge of the city; the DOOP can pick you up from there. As for the robot and Amy here, I'll have Bender meet you at the edge of the city when I see him again. When I realized who he was I told him to stick around and wait, and I'd let him go with you. He wouldn't listen though. Said there was too much looting to be done. I'll have Amy fixed up good as new in a couple of weeks. I should have taken over the planet by then, assuming the general that's leading the DOOP forces is as big an idiot as his tactics so far seem to suggest." There was a pause. "But when you said 'us', you weren't referring to them, were you?" She chuckled. "Ah, I get it." Her voice got a little louder. "I was wondering where you were. I have to say, I'm impressed. Now I see why Fry looks up to you so much. You can come on out now, Leela."

Her cover blown, Leela didn't have much choice but to crawl her way out of the sewer pipe. Very, very slowly, she stood, palms outward, and moved to stand to Fry's right.. Her plasma rifle lay at her feet, partially hidden by an I-beam,. Hopefully it had gone unnoticed.

"It's nice to finally meet you." Chelsea was saying. "I've heard so much about y-" The Asian woman's voice cut off like a switch. "What in god's name is _that_?" It was a growl.

"What?" Fry asked, in his characteristically stupid way. Of course Chelsea was referring to Leela's eye. The giant white orb that had caused her nothing but trouble since as far back as she could remember.

"Y- you're an alien, a subhuman!" Chelsea gasped. "Fry, how could you not tell me she was this… thing?!"

Fry was visibly confused. He kept looking back and forth between the two women. "What do you mean? What's wrong with her?!" He sounded panicked, as if Chelsea could see some giant, malignant tumor on her that he himself could not.

"She's got one eye!" Chelsea raged. "You never once mentioned she had one eye!"

"I- I didn't think it was important." He said, still confused.

Leela almost cried. _I didn't think it was important_. Those six words were the most beautiful thing that anyone had ever said about her. She felt a wave of affection for her old friend at that moment. She would have hugged him, if not for the army of evil cyborgs standing around waiting to kill them. Suddenly all of his immaturity, his thoughtlessness and propensity for getting them both in trouble seemed utterly trivial. _How could I have been so awful to him?_ She wondered.

"She's got elbow talons too." Locuteus interjected helpfully, but Chelsea didn't hear her. "Not important?! You had me risk my life searching all over the goddamned galaxy for this creature, had me competing for your affections with the memories that you had of her, and you didn't think it might matter to me, just a _tiny_ bit, that she wasn't even human?!"

Fry thought about it. "No." He said simply. "I didn't."

Chelsea's eyes blazed. Leela shifted her weight slightly. She would be prepared for what was coming next. "You idiot. You pathetic little _idiot_." A gauss rifle appeared in her hands. "You'll die for this." She shouted. "I'll kill you. You and that animal bitch." She leveled the weapon at Leela's face. "I'll burn that eyeball right out of her ugly little alien head."

"No!" Fry hurled himself at Leela, trying to put his body between the weapon and its target. He was several seconds too early, and so all he managed to do was end up lying face down in the dirt. Fortunately, Leela was no longer there when Chelsea finally did pull the trigger. By the time Fry managed to get to his feet, his former captain was already vaulting over the shovel of a parked backhoe, trying to draw fire long enough for Fry to get away.


	12. Chapter 12

Leela's heart thumped heavily in her chest as she half ran, half stumbled down the middle of some anonymous downtown avenue. Behind her she dragged what amounted to a one hundred seventy five pound dead weight on wobbly legs. Fry had long since reached the limit of his endurance. He'd tried to stop for breath at one point, and had nearly been blasted to mush for his trouble. Now he barely managed to stay upright as Leela's unrelenting grip on his arm forced him onward.

"Leela" He wheezed. "I- I can't." A rack of dry coughs shook him before he could continue. "I can't breathe."

"If you can talk, you can breathe." She was beginning to loose her patience. If Fry had ever bothered to exercise, even just a little, he wouldn't have these problems. Besides, what was she going to do, let him collapse there on the sidewalk so that Chelsea could saunter up to him and rip him limb from limb at her leisure? Not bloody likely.

"But Leela!"

"Oh, for the love of- Alright, fine!" With Fry slowing them down, they were losing the little bit of lead that they'd gained anyway. Leela looked around her, but there wasn't much to see. Somehow they had ended up in an old warehouse district on the banks of the Hudson. There was a hulking Momcorp storage facility of some kind to their left that they might be able to hide in long enough for Fry to get his second wind. With a little luck, Chelsea and her goons might not even see them enter. Shifting her hold on Fry's arm, Leela turned and dragged him into the absolute blackness within.

Without any source of illumination beyond the meager bluish-green glow of the screen built into her wrist computer, it was almost impossible for them to find their way through the interior of the building. Leela tried to guess at her surroundings in case she needed to retrace her steps in a hurry, but all she could make out were vague impressions. The front entrance had led them into a narrow corridor, of that much she was sure. But, after what had probably been only thirty feet or so- it was even harder for her to judge distances than usual when it was dark- the hallway opened out into a room that was too large for the light from her wristcomp to reach the far walls or the ceiling. It was clearly a storage room, as it was filled with piles of containers of varying sizes and shapes, which were organized into 'islands' that were scattered, seemingly randomly, across the floor. Each container was adorned with the official Momcorp seal. Leela had to settle for the first hiding place she came to- she wasn't willing to risk getting turned around looking for better cover- which ended up being a sliver of empty space between one such island and the only wall she could see. There they waited uncomfortably for about five minutes while Fry's loud wheezing steadily faded away. Leela couldn't see her friend- she'd turned off her wristcomp to avoid being seen, of course- even though his face was close enough to hers that she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She found herself in an extremely uncomfortable position- not just physically, but emotionally as well. At the same time that she was thoroughly annoyed and disgusted at Fry for once again dragging them back into trouble when they were just about to escape, she couldn't help but respect and even admire his admittedly botched attempt to 'take a bullet' for her, as the outdated saying went. And then there was what he had said back in the construction yard, six innocent words that had made it impossible to be angry with the redhead, damn him, no matter how much she wanted to be.

There was a clunk, and then the hum of machinery somewhere above them, followed moments later by the tiniest sensation of moving air. "What was that?" Fry hissed into Leela's ear.

It took a moment for the sound to register. It was familiar, something she'd heard a million times before but never really paid any close attention too… "I think it's the air conditioner." Then the importance of having an electrical device turn itself on sank in. "Aww, crap."

Lights turned on all over the building. Fry, who hadn't been expecting it, instinctively jumped to his feet. Leela was a little slower to stand. Chelsea's voice boomed through the storage room over a loudspeaker that was probably mounted on a wall, somewhere out of view. "Ah, there we go." The disembodied voice said cheerfully. "These crazy computers you have in the future are hard to control; I can never figure out which function does what. Oh, and Leela, for future reference, when you're trying to hide from someone that controls every bit of electronics within a thirty mile radius, it probably isn't a good idea to turn on a computer that's attached to your arm, especially not one that's equipped with GPS."

Leela winced when she heard that last remark. _Well_, she reasoned, _I must have turned off the wristcomp before she could get an exact fix on us, or she'd have just come in here and wiped the floor with us. She must be hoping to flush us out into in the open_.

"By the way," Chelsea continued conversationally, "if you were thinking about trying to escape, don't bother. I had Locuteus lock down all of the doors, and there's an army of drones outside with orders to shoot anything that has a pulse. Call me cliché, but I could never resist a good climactic, fate of the universe hangs in the balance type battle. Since it doesn't look like I'm going to find much of an adversary in the DOOP, the two of you will have to suffice." She chuckled. "Now, to make everything fair, I've turned the lights on so that your unmodified eyes can see. It'll be the two of you versus Locuteus and me. Whoever isn't dead in the morning wins. Sound like a plan?" Another laugh, this time with a bit of a gloat in it. "I'll give you a couple minutes to strategize. Good luck!" The loudspeaker died.

Fry was visibly trembling. His eyes kept darting back and forth, as if Chelsea was just around the corner. Of course, if she _had_ been right around the corner, there wouldn't have been much need for the loudspeaker, but Leela didn't bother trying to explain that to him. "What are we going to do?" The panic in his eyes was troubling.

"The first thing we're going to do is find a better hiding place." Leela said with all of the fake confidence that she could muster. "Here, take this." She handed him the small stunner that she'd been carrying at her waist since leaving Momcorp Headquarters. It probably wouldn't be of any use, but Fry didn't know that. It would act as a little reassurance, maybe enough to keep him from completely losing his nerve.

Leela eventually found what she was looking for, a maintenance hatch built into the wall. It served as access to the maze of ducts, pipes, and electrical conduits that snaked throughout the building. Fry would have a good chance of remaining undetected in there.

When Fry was safely wedged out of sight behind an air duct, Leela turned to go. She stopped when Fry called after her. "Wait! What's going on? Where are you going?"

"You're staying here out of sight where you'll be safe. I'm going to go finish this." Leela replied, and started to move again.

"Leela, no!"

Leela whirled on him. "What do you want me to do?" She demanded. "This girlfriend of yours has tried to kill us half a dozen different ways in the past half hour, she's turned Amy into a mindless zombie, and wants to take over the world and wipe out all alien life in the universe!" The PE captain's grip tightened on her plasma rifle as she thought about the three soldiers that had died because of what Chelsea was doing. "She's got to be stopped Fry, and you know it."

Deep down he _did_ know it; she could see it in his eyes. It was hardly fair for her to blame him for not being able to face that knowledge. "But what about Amy?" He pleaded.

That was harder. "I don't know. We'll have to see." If it came to it, Leela wondered if she'd have the strength to do what needed to be done. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

After putting some distance between herself and Fry's hiding place, Leela settled on one of her own. There was no reason to wander aimlessly through the building, waiting to stumble into somebody's crosshairs. If Chelsea wanted to play cat and mouse, Leela was willing to play along. But when the cat eventually tracked her prey to its nest, she was liable to find that this particular mouse packed quite a bit of heat.

It didn't take long for Chelsea to appear, as Leela had anticipated. She'd purposely left a trail of moved boxes behind her, leading away from Fry's hiding place. When she thought of the ex-delivery boy squeezed into a dark space behind an air duct, she couldn't help but feel bad. There hadn't been much of an alternative though. Fry was a great guy, but he didn't stand a chance in hell in a serious firefight. And Leela doubted he had it in him to shoot back at an ex-coworker, let alone an ex-girlfriend. What was really surprising was that Fry hadn't demanded to try and help regardless.

Whatever the case, it looked like Leela's strategy of drawing Chelsea away from Fry was working. From her vantage point high up in a colossal pile of two-meter metal cubes of indecipherable purpose, she could catch occasional glimpses of the woman's jet black hair as she moved stealthily from island to island. The plasma rifle that Leela carried with her wasn't particularly accurate, but it didn't really have to be. The PE Captain was lying full out on the top of the box pile, her weapon cradled securely against her right shoulder. All she had to do was wait for the unwitting cyborg to blunder into her sights and… She fired. A ball of green plasma screamed across empty space and exploded into a ball of fire. Flaming cardboard, bits of packing material, and other detritus rained down on Leela's head as a stack of boxes collapsed. There was just enough time for it to occur to her that shooting a ball of plasma in what amounted to a gigantic tinderbox might not have been such a good idea after all before the muzzle of a nasty looking weapon appeared from behind a ten foot, steel canister of dehydrated buggalo milk. She'd missed Chelsea by about five feet. Leela almost realized her mistake too late. Sudden fear stabbing at her like a knife in her gut, she threw herself off of the towering metal conductor on which she was perched just a fraction of a second before Chelsea's gauss rifle discharged. Several thousand amps ripped into a metal box that had been a couple feet below Leela's hiding place. A web of bluish-white electricity fanned out from the point of impact, melting and fusing the containers together. One of the tendrils of light snaked out and connected with Leela's ankle, sending a jolt through her body. The smell of ozone and singed hair reached her nostrils as she landed none-too-gently on an adjacent box pile. Another gauss bolt snaked its way toward her. She fired a few quick blasts in the general direction that the shot had come from, jumped the five or so feet to the ground, and took off running- thankful to still be in one piece.

Back in the crawlspace, Fry found himself in a most unwelcome situation. Amy, or Locuteus, or whatever he was supposed to be calling her now, was somewhere outside the closed hatch to his hiding spot. He couldn't see her, but he'd recognized the high-pitched scream followed by a crash that was her signature. Apparently assimilation wasn't a cure for clumsiness.

His mind raced as he tried to figure out what to do. On the one had, Leela wanted him to stay put. _If I go out there, I'll just get in Leela's way_. He reasoned. _And I don't even know how to help anyway. All I've got is this little stunner thing_. He fingered the weapon. For some reason, the weight of it in his hand was immensely reassuring, even if he knew it was no match for the firepower he was up against. He kept his eyes on the tiny rim of radiance that leaked into the crawlspace from around the hatch. _But what good am I in here?_ _It's two on one out there, and what if Leela gets injured or something?_ A loud concussion from somewhere in the building seemed to underscore the possibility.

Fry had had a lot of time to think while the rest of his coworkers had slept back in their cell at Momcorp headquarters. Lying there among his old friends had felt so _right_, even considering the circumstances of their imprisonment. Even with Leela seemingly still angry at him, he'd felt almost instantly like he'd fallen back into his old life. _It's almost like I never left._ He'd remarked to himself at one point. And that's when he'd finally realized his mistake. For the last three months he had been trying to rebuild his life. He'd been _convinced_ that his friends had deserted him, that he'd destroyed the chance he'd been given to make something of himself after defrosting on New Year's Eve two years earlier. But here he was, surrounded by the people who had supposedly betrayed him, and they'd taken him back without hesitation, even after he'd abruptly cut them out of his life. Even Leela, who Fry knew he'd hurt more than anyone, seemed willing to forgive him. And he knew, as he'd always known, that he belonged with them. Somehow, despite their faults, their arguments and petty jealousies, he, Leela, and Bender, and to a lesser extend Amy, the Professor, and Hermes, had formed a type of family. A dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless. Only by almost losing it forever had he even figured out that he'd had it in the first place, but now that he recognized it for what it was, he wasn't about to have it snatched away from him again while he sat cowering in the dark.

As silently as he could, Fry disentangled himself from the air duct and groped his way through the dark toward the hatch. _Amy's probably still somewhere nearby_. He thought as he waved his hands in front of him to give him early warning of obstacles that he couldn't see. _All I have to do is pop out, surprise her, shoot her with this thing, and then go_- Clang! Fry's head connected with a lead pipe that crossed the narrow service corridor precisely at the level of his forehead. Stunned, he sank to a squatting position and held his head as tiny, multihued sparks exploded in his eyes. He didn't have long to recover, for the sound of his clumsiness had not gone unnoticed. A soft, muffled "Guh?" drifted to his ears from the other side of the service hatch. Horrified, Fry backpedalled a short distance down the corridor until his back came up against something hard and metallic. The hatch in front of him opened, bathing him in a pool of light that was almost blinding to his darkness-adjusted eyes. Amy was a dark shadow in that pool of light. _No_. Fry reminded himself. _Not Amy. Locuteus_.

"Fry, is that you?" the figure asked. "Don't resist, Fry. It's, you know, futile and stuff."

Fry almost completely forgot that Leela had given him a means of protecting himself against this precise situation. If he'd worried earlier that he wouldn't be able pull the trigger if he found Amy in his sights, his doubts were now entirely extinguished. The little stunner seemingly aimed itself and fired of its own volition. A diffuse, bluish-green glow reached out from the weapon and hit Amy in the chest. The electric _crack_ that marked the stunner's connection made Fry jump. Amy convulsed, letting out a shriek that was metallic and inhuman before her body hit the ground like a sack of space potatoes. It was too much. Fry, unable to even to move, let the suddenly heavy stunner fall from his trembling hand. _What have I done?_

_Ok, so this isn't working_. Leela thought to herself as she skidded around a corner and cartwheeled over a handful of packaged Xbox 16200s. Chelsea wasn't far behind; Leela could hear her footfalls just a few paces behind her. Leela seemingly wasn't able to lose her, even in the maze of boxes that were piled everywhere. She was holding on to a lead of a few seconds, but that couldn't last forever. Leela had been running all night. She wasn't at her limit yet, but she was starting to notice an ache in her legs, and each breath was just a little more labored than the last.

There was some kind of horrible scream somewhere in the distance, and Chelsea stopped running for a moment. Leela brought her plasma rifle up to her waist and squeezed off two shots. Chelsea clumsily moved out of the way, and the rounds tore through a pile of mattresses that reached nearly to the distant ceiling. The top third of the pile fell away from the rest and tumbled to the ground, burying Chelsea 10 feet deep. A siren started to wail overhead as tendrils of smoke rose toward the ceiling. Leela turned away and began to put as much distance between her and her opponent as possible. A whitish foam began to rain down on her from above as the building's emergency fire suppression system tried to put out the rapidly growing fire.

"Amy? Amy, can you hear me?" Fry shook the intern's limp body, but he got no response. "Amy?!" He was starting to panic. Amy had a pulse; he'd learned just enough from watching M.A.S.H reruns to figure out how to check for it. But she'd been out cold for five minutes, and there was smoke rising from somewhere not too far away.

Fry gave Amy one last shake before letting her slide to the floor. He sat down next to her and exhaled loudly. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. Out in the open, he was a sitting duck, but he couldn't just leave Amy alone in the middle of the floor. And then there was that column of smoke, which seemed to be a bit thicker than it had been when he'd last looked at it.

_Amy's only a hundred pounds or so_. He thought_. I could probably carry her_. But where was he going to go? Even if he managed to get out of the building without Chelsea finding him, there was an army of cyborgs surrounding the place with orders to shoot him on sight. His only other option was the crawlspace that he'd been hiding in. There was no way to know where it led, but it was the only route away from the strengthening fire that didn't end at the business end of a gauss rifle. At least, he hoped it didnt.

Leela stopped to catch her breath. She was fairly certain that she'd lost Chelsea. No one had tried to shoot her for several minutes, which was a pleasant change of pace. The white foam falling from the sky was making things difficult. It was like an ankle-deep sea of styrofoam clinging to every surface, and Leela couldn't help but leave tracks in it as she scrambled from one box island to the next. She'd had to double back and retrace her steps several times before she was confident that she couldn't be followed.

Leela just couldn't get over how mindbogglingly _big_ the warehouse was. She and Chelsea had been playing cat and mouse for half an hour now, and Leela had yet to see the entire structure.

About 30 seconds passed before the PE Captain started to move again. She didn't have much in the way of a plan yet, but she was certain that her current strategy of running around in circles in a building that was on fire wasn't paying off. Now that she'd lost Chelsea, she was slowly working her way back toward Fry. Somehow they were going to have to escape the building, and then try to get out of the city. How all of that was going to happen, she hadn't the slightest idea.

When she'd made it about halfway back to Fry's hiding place, she came across a set of tracks in the deepening foam. Her first thought was that they belonged to Locuteus, but she immediately realized that they were too big. _Fry?_ But that didn't make sense either. The tracks were heading in almost the same direction as she was, which meant they were headed toward Fry's hiding place, not away from it. Remembering the scream that she'd heard earlier, Leela decided to follow the tracks. It wasn't hard to do; whoever had left them hadn't even tried to mask them.

The tracks didn't lead to Fry's hiding place, although they must have passed close by. Instead, they headed straight for the far wall and disappeared into a small hallway that had been hidden behind a stack of crates. Leela would never even have known it was there if not for the trail she was following.

The hallway was short, 10 yards at the longest, and soon emptied into a long, narrow chamber filled with row upon row of gigantic metal silos. An open corridor, really just the extension of the hallway that she'd just left, ran down the middle of the room and ended at a solid-looking door. There was no fire depressant foam here, and the tracks Leela was following petered out to nothing. It didn't matter though, for she could see her target walking confidently away from her down the center of the corridor.

Leela let out a growl when she recognized the grey uniform and black boots. She leveled her weapon, and the figure stopped and turned to face her.

"What are you doing here?" Leela demanded.

Walt smiled and shrugged. A laser pistol was in his left hand, held at the ready. "Why, I'm here to help, of course." He said oily.

In a few seconds, Leela had closed the distance between them. "Bull pies. You wouldn't help us if your life depended on it. You'd better tell me what you're really doing here, and do it _now_, because I promise I will kill you where you stand if the next words out of your mouth aren't the truth." She cocked her rifle. "Actually, now that I think about it, don't tell me the truth. I'll enjoy blasting you to pieces." It wasn't an idle threat this time, either. She fully intended to vaporize his sniveling face.

If Walt was worried, he certainly didn't show it. "I didn't say I was here to help _you_." He said evenly. "All I said was that I'm here to help. Myself, as it turns out. But, what is good for me is also good for you."

"Yeah, and how's that?"

"Well, this cyborg friend of yours is planning to take over the universe. That's not very good for business, now is it?" When Leela didn't respond, Walt continued "When mother discovers what happened to the Moss crop, and she _will_ find out sooner or later, I'll have to take the fall, but saving the universe will more than make up for the lost revenue."

Leela wanted so badly to pull the trigger that her finger was twitching, but she stayed her hand. The problem was that Walt wasn't lying; she could read it in the steady confidence of his body language. It was hard to swallow, but Walt, who obviously knew his way around the facility, might be useful to her. For awhile. "Only you could be twisted enough to have to rationalize saving lives as good business sense." She spat. She was silent for a few seconds, and then, reluctantly, she lowered her rifle. "But, as dirty as it makes feel to admit, you're more useful to me alive than dead." When Walt bowed graciously, Leela raised her weapon again. "But you're going to hand over your pistol, and if I get even the _slightest_ feeling that you're not on the level, I won't hesitate to use this. Understood?"

Walt nodded, and handed over his weapon butt first. "Then we have a deal. Excellent!"

Leela took the weapon and tucked it into her waistband. She felt the bile rise in her throat as Walt gestured for her to follow him down the corridor. She swallowed hard. "Do you at least have a plan?" she asked as she hurried to match his step.

"Of course!" Walt said. "There's a plasma fusion boiler not too far from here. I'm no engineer, but I assume that, if we shoot a few holes in it..." He shrugged.

Leela stopped in her tracks. "Wait a minute. You want to blow up a fusion boiler while we're still in the building? _That's_ your plan?!"

"I admit there's a few, ah, minor issues with it, but I'm sure we'll work them out."

"Great." Mentally, Leela was kicking herself for not just shooting Walt the moment she'd seen him.

Leela and Walt had made it about half way down the corridor, which was deceptively long, when there was a loud noise ahead of them and to their right. Leela pulled Walt behind a nearby silo, and the two of them waited. The PE Captain made sure to watch Walt out of the corner of her eye, but he didn't even look at the pistol that protruded from her sweatpants.

There was some kind of a scraping sound, followed by a barely audible clang and a thud. Someone began to speak in a low whisper. She thought she recognized Fry's voice.

"Fry, is that you?" She hissed. The whispering abruptly stopped. A few moments later, there was a cautious answer.

"Leela?"

Now Leela was sure that it was him. "Fry, its me." she said, a little louder. "I've got Walt with me. He's decided to help us. We're going to come out now, so don't shoot, alright?" She gestured with her rifle for Walt to follow her out into the open. The two of them stood quietly in the open for a second or two before Leela saw Fry cautiously round a silo on the opposite side of the corridor. The ex delivery boy looked exhausted. He was covered in dust and grime, and there was a nasty looking bruise on his forehead.

"Fry, what happened to you?" Leela asked.

"I- I shot Amy." he said and looked away.

There was a moment of silence before Leela could manage a reply. "Oh. Oh Fry, I'm- I'm so sorry." She moved to embrace him, but something caught her eye. A leg protruded from behind the silo that Fry had been hiding behind. "Wait, what's that?"

Fry didn't even look. "I had to get her away from the fire." He said. "The only way was through the maintenance tube thing. I had to drag her." On the verge of hysteria, he reached into his pocket and threw his little stun pistol across the room. "Leela, I _shot_ _Amy_!"

"Wait, you shot Amy with _that_? With the stun pistol I gave you?" Leela rushed to the intern's side, and felt a wave of relief wash over her when she felt the regular beat of her pulse. "She's alive! For God's sake, Fry. Don't scare me like that!"

"But I shot her!"

"No" Leela replied. "You shot Locuteus. And she'll be perfectly fine when she wakes up, just like you were when Walt shot you, remember?"

Fry started to protest, but seemed to give up. He nodded.

"Okay, good. Now come on, we've wasted way too much time. Chelsea wasn't that far behind me; she'll be here at any moment." And then there was the fire. The suppressant was slowing its growth, but she could now just barely smell smoke wafting in from the storage room where it had started.

"What about Amy?" Fry asked nervously. "I don't want to leave her behind again."

"We aren't going to. You and Walt are going to carry her while I cover you. Alright?" Walt began to protest, but a slight movement of Leela's weapon was enough to shut him up.

Fry seemingly noticed Walt for the first time when he took a step toward Amy. The redhead moved to put himself between Walt and the intern. "He's going to help us?" He asked, dubiously.

_Yes, by being another target for Chelsea to shoot at_. "Walt wants Chelsea stopped as much as we do. He wants to help us."

When Fry gave Walt a sideways look that clearly showed how little he believed that, Leela added "I don't like it either, but we need him, Fry. And I trust him more where I can see him than I do skulking around on his own."

The redhead still looked suspicious, but when he looked into Leela's eye and didn't seem to find anything to contradict what she'd said, he nodded reluctantly, and let Walt pass. The two men knelt by Amy's side. After they both put one of her arms over their shoulders, they stood in unison. They began to half walk, half stumble toward the door at the end of the corridor, but they didn't get far before they heard footsteps running down the corridor after them. A gauss bolt ricocheted off the floor not too far away. Leela cursed loudly. They had taken too long; Chelsea had found Walt's trail in the foam.

Another bolt whizzed by, and Leela had to duck out of the way. "Move!" she yelled.

Fry and Walt tried to pick up the pace, but Amy's dead weight was too awkward for them to manage more than a fast walk. It was immediately obvious that they weren't going to make it. Leela yelled for the two men to put Amy out of harm's way behind one of the silos. Then, rolling across the width of the corridor, she took cover behind a silo of her own. She aimed her plasma rifle and sent three blasts crashing into the corridor where Chelsea had been. Chelsea ducked out of the way. The three smoldering craters that Leela's rifle had left in the floor made the PE Captain hesitate. She had no idea what the towering silos contained. For all she knew, they were filled to the brim with explosive darkmatter oil. Firing a ball of superheated plasma into one of the gigantic cylinders was probably not a smart idea. She dropped the rifle and pulled Walt's laser pistol from her waistband. She glanced at it quickly, noted that it was fully charged, and leaned around the edge of her silo. A crackling bolt of electricity shot by close enough that her bangs were singed. She cursed loudly and fired back.


	13. Chapter 13

Fry felt his heart skip a beat. He'd thought Leela was hit, but she didn't look hurt. Cautiously, he peered around the curved metal surface of the silo he was using as cover and scanned the rows of identical silos for Chelsea. He thought he saw something protrude from behind one of the cylinders about 10 rows away. It took his mind awhile to register what he was looking at. _Gun_. He turned away just in time.

"Leela!" he called. "She's behind one of these container thingies, about, uhh, I dunno how far away that is!"

"Thanks Fry, that's very helpful." Leela yelled back, sarcastically. "Please don't hesitate…" she paused to fire off a volley at Chelsea dove across the corridor. "… to distract me again."

Deflated, Fry gave up and went to sit beside Amy's motionless form. A flurry of gauss bolts shot past, but he was well out of their reach. "Leela and Chelsea are fighting." He told the intern. He'd been talking to her ever since he'd decided to haul her into the maintenance tunnel, though he didn't really know why. Even if she could hear him, it was Locuteus he was talking to, not Amy.

"I don't think Leela's winning." He admitted. "Chelsea has that lightning gun, but all Leela has is Walt's little pistol. Her big gun must have run out of ammo or something." He paused for a moment. _Wait a minute, where is Walt, anyway?_ The delivery boy looked around, but there was no sign of him. _Uhoh, Leela's gonna be mad at me again_.

"Umm, Leela?" Fry called.

Leela hurled herself across the open corridor and half rolled, half tumbled into the space between Fry's silo and the one in front of it. He couldn't see her anymore, but he could clearly hear her yell at him to shut up and let her concentrate.

Not quite sure what to do, Fry peeked around the side of his hiding place and saw Chelsea casually walking down the middle of the corridor toward him. When she saw him, her face broke into a grin that made his face turn pale. She must have somehow known that he was unarmed, because she didn't bother to move out of the way until Leela's pistol popped out into the open. Fry noticed with fear that Chelsea had cut the distance between them to five silo-widths.

Suddenly, Fry remembered Leela's discarded plasma rifle. It was still sitting where she'd dropped it, on the other side of the corridor, one silo closer to Chelsea than he was. _I shouldn't let Chelsea get that_. He realized. _Leela might need it later_. Swallowing his fear, Fry made a blind dash across the twenty feet of open space. Something very hot passed just behind the back of his head, but he managed to make it in one piece. Shaking from his close call, Fry rounded the side of the silo opposite the corridor and ran the short distance to Leela's weapon. Carefully he picked it up and cradled it against his body, much the way that he had done with the medkit that Leela had given him- and that he had lost about five minutes later. He was just turning to retrace his steps when he saw the unmistakable figure of Walt pass between a silo farther down his row and the wall that ran adjacent to the main corridor. He was walking in the direction away from Chelsea. The uniformed man didn't seem to notice that Fry had seen him. Fry, suspicious and sure that Leela would want him to keep an eye on their 'ally', decided to follow him.

Walt passed three rows of silos before turning left toward the corridor. He stopped at the silo adjacent to the corridor, which was positioned across the open space from and two rows behind Leela. Fry positioned himself where he could keep an eye on what Walt was doing and waited. After risking exposing himself long enough to steal a glance at Leela, Walt kneeled behind his silo and reached into one of his pockets. He pulled out something small and metallic. _My stun gun_! Fry realized. _He must've snuck away to go look for it when I had my back turned!_ But to do that, he'd have had to actually pass Chelsea, run halfway down the corridor, turn around, and then pass Chelsea again. He wasn't planning to use the gun on Chelsea then, or he'd have done it already. So that meant… Actually, what _did_ that mean? Confused, he watched Walt raise the pistol as Leela cursed nearby.

"Leela!" Fry screamed frantically and tossed himself at Walt. He landed on top of him just as Walt pulled the trigger. There was a hum and a familiar _crack_.

The stunner hit her a glancing blow in the legs, which immediately went numb. Losing her balance, the PE Captain toppled out into the corridor. Her head hit the smooth black tile with a thud that made her vision go blurry for an instant. Walt's laser pistol fell from her hand and skidded to a stop about five feet away.

Chelsea, sensing her victory, emerged from cover and began striding in Leela's direction. Leela, seeing the laser pistol, began to crawl toward it. Chelsea, seeing this, began to laugh. She stopped about ten feet from her helpless prey and put her hands on her hips. "Go on." She mocked. "Just a little farther. You can do it." When Leela looked up to glare at her, she laughed again. "Oh, don't be angry. You brought this on yourself, you know. Its what you get for associating with unmodified humans; they'll betray you at the first opportunity."

"Go to hell." Leela hissed through clenched teeth. The pistol was just about in her reach.

Another laugh. "Defiant to the last; I love it. You know, if you weren't so hideously ugly, I might actually be able to respect that. Oh, and you do realize that I'm going to shoot you the moment you touch that thing, right?" When Leela ignored her, Chelsea sighed. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you." She raised her weapon.

Walt proved to be more of a match than Fry had expected. The balding man wasn't very strong, but he somehow kept managing to worm his way out of Fry's grasp. It was like trying to grip a snake that had been dipped in robot oil. Finally Fry managed to snatch the stunner way from him. Then, raising his arm over his head, Fry brought the weapon down on his opponent's skull with all of his strength. Walt immediately went limp.

Panting, Fry stood and turned to find Chelsea standing over Leela while the cyclops slowly pulled herself along the ground.

He was just in time to hear Chelsea say "Well, don't say I didn't warn you." When the raven haired woman raised her gauss gun and pointed it squarely at Leela's head, Fry felt a wave of adrenaline crash through his body. Leela's discarded plasma rifle appeared in his hands. He screamed, and waving the gun wildly in the air, he charged.

_Almost got it._ Leela thought. Her fingertips just barely brushed the trigger guard. She knew she wasn't going to be fast enough. Chelsea would fry her long before she could pick the weapon up and use it, but, if she was going to die, Leela planned to do it with a gun in her hand. She wasn't going to get slaughtered while she lay helpless in the middle of the floor. With one last push, Leela managed to curl her middle finger around the trigger guard. There was a loud cocking noise a foot from her head as she pulled the pistol toward her. _Well, this is it_. She thought.

There was a loud yell, and the sound of running feet. Chelsea, who Leela could see out of the corner of her eye, froze in confusion. A moment later a volley of plasma flew over Leela's head, followed by a red ball of fury. Fry slammed into Chelsea at full speed, causing the woman to stumble back a few feet. Chelsea growled, and grabbing Fry with one hand, sent him flying back the way he'd come. The redhead skidded a good ten feet when he hit the ground. Leela rolled over onto her back and aimed the laser pistol, but Chelsea ripped it out of her grasp and stuck her own gun in Leela's face. She started to pull the trigger, but a searing greenish-white light came screaming down the corridor and caught her in the stomach. The plasma's momentum was enough to pick her up and hurl her into a nearby silo. There was a terrific ripping sound as the metal canister buckled under the impact, and then a terrific explosion as the ball of plasma lost containment. A gaping hole appeared in the silo, and something soft and purple flooded out into the corridor.

Fry let his arm slump to the floor. The plasma rifle clicked against the hard tile, and Fry let it go. He watched the cloud of smoke that had enveloped Chelsea slowly dissipate as he lay on his back where he'd come to rest. His head hurt. His hand came away sticky when he reached up to touch his forehead, and his surroundings seemed to suddenly retreat from him. He sank into unconsciousness.

It took awhile for everything that had just happened to really register in Leela's mind. She blinked a couple of times, and tried to look around her. "Fry?" She tried, but there was no response. Some of the sensation was starting to come back to her legs; not much, but enough that she was able to get up onto her knees after some considerable effort and crawl in the direction of her friend's body.

It took her awhile, but Leela finally managed to push herself alongside Fry. The bottom halves of her legs were about as useful as logs, but she was eventually able to get herself into a sitting position.

Worried by the blood trickling from a gash in the ex delivery boy's forehead, Leela bent over him. She noted with relief that he was breathing. "Fry? Fry, can you hear me?" She called softly. She took him by the shoulders and gently shook him when he began to stir. "Wake up, Fry. We won!"

Suddenly Fry sat bolt upright, and then winced as his bruised body protested.

Leela smiled at him. "You look like hell." She teased, hoping to provoke a smile. Fry just stared blankly at her for a moment, seemingly looking through her, before his eyes were drawn to the smashed silo. Alarmed, Leela grabbed Fry's chin and forcibly turned him back toward her.

"Don't." She said softly. "Don't look."

There were tears in Fry's eyes when he looked at her again. He didn't speak for quite awhile, but then a weak smile appeared on his face. "You too." He said.

Leela blinked, surprised. "What?"

"You look like hell too." None of the pain had left his eyes, but the smile stayed on his face.

Leela returned the smile and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. "Do you think you can stand?"

Fry experimented with moving his legs a little. "Yeah, I think so." He said and, when Leela nodded to him, painfully hauled himself to his feet. When he was relatively sure he wasn't going to fall down again, he reached out and grabbed Leela's hand. After a few false starts Leela managed to stand, and was even able to walk if she leaned on Fry's shoulder. By the time the two of them had hobbled their way back to where they'd left Amy, Leela had just about all of her strength back.

Amy was still out cold, which was a little alarming. It had been a long time since she'd been zapped. _She should have come around by now_. Leela thought uneasily. Earlier, she'd told Fry that Amy was going to be fine, just like Fry himself had been when he'd been shot, but she wasn't sure that was the truth. Who knew what effect a stunner would have on someone who'd been merged with a computer?

A low groan reached Leela's ears. _Oh yeah, Walt_.

Bruised and disheveled, Walt lay in a heap against one of the silos. His left hand was pressed against the back of his head, where a large lump was forming. Leela crossed her arms and stood over him. "You shot me." She said flatly.

At the sound of her voice, Walt started. He looked up at her, and there was a glimmer of fear in his eyes for the briefest of moments. "Actually," he said, "I've shot you twice now."

That was a mistake. Anger flared in Leela's eye and she kicked him hard in the ribs. Walt made a noise like a balloon being deflated. "Want to try that again?" She spat.

Walt winced when he tried to talk. "That was the deal" he finally managed. "If you became too much to deal with, I was supposed to stop you somehow."

"Deal? What deal?" Fry demanded.

"With Chelsea, I'm sure." Leela answered. "I wondered how you managed to get in here so easily. It was because Chelsea's goons let you in, wasn't it? "

Walt nodded affirmative, and Leela kicked him again. "Why? Why in God's name would you help _her_, you slithery little worm?!" She raised her fist to strike him, but let her arm drop when Walt cringed away from her. Disgusted, Leela waited for him to speak.

"I didn't have a choice." He wheezed. "She has my brothers."

Leela was suddenly speechless. Walt caught the confused expression on her face. "When the cyborgs showed up, right after our talk in the alley, they got Larry and Ignar. When Ms. Xiao learned that you weren't human, she went crazy." He paused a moment to breathe before continuing "She was going to turn me into a drone, but I managed to convince her to let me and my brothers go if I helped her get rid of you."

Fry and Leela exchanged glances. "You risked your life to save your brothers? That's surprisingly… un-evil of you." Leela said finally. "But you didn't really expect Chelsea to let you all go, did you?"

"My brothers are idiots." Walt said with a bit of anger. "But they're still my brothers." With a groan, Walt managed to get himself into a sitting position, and then, after resting for a moment, he pulled himself to his feet. "I knew that Ms. Xiao wasn't going to let them go. I was planning to earn her trust by killing you, and then stabbing her in the back when she wasn't looking."

Fry nodded, relieved. "Yep, that sounds more like you." he said.

Walt scowled at the redhead, but, rather than making a sarcastic comment, he seemed to grow alarmed. "There is more smoke in here than there was earlier." He said.

With a start, Leela realized that he was right. The air was starting to get a little hazy, and there was no way it was all due to the fireball from the exploding plasma round. _We completely forgot that the building is on fire_. Leela realized in amazement. When she looked down the corridor toward the gigantic storage room, she could just barely make out a reddish glow. The fire wouldn't spread into the silo chamber- there was nothing for it to burn- but they could all suffocate to death if they stayed too long.

"Is there another way out of here?" Leela demanded of Walt, who nodded.

"Yes, through there." He pointed toward the metal door that they had been trying to reach.

"I thought that was where you hid your big guns." Leela said, suspicious that Walt was once again up to something.

"There are many rooms back there." Walt replied. "One of them leads to an exit."

Leela stared at him long and hard, but eventually decided that it was worth the risk. "Alright, fine." She said. "You're going to take us to the exit. Fry, do you think you can manage with Amy all by yourself, while I make sure this creep doesn't try anything else?

Fry nodded and started to walk briskly away.

He'd just about made it to the silo that Amy had been abandoned by when his eyes were drawn again toward the charred remains of the damaged silo. _I have to know_. Fry realized. He couldn't let his last memory of Chelsea be her look of confusion and fear as she disappeared into a fiery explosion. He knew what he was likely to find, but he had to see her one last time to say goodbye.

A hole ten feet wide had been smashed in the side of the cylinder. Something purple and soft had erupted from the hole and settled into a pile about three feet deep and ten feet across. At the far end of the pile was a motionless figure, half buried. When Fry tried to step on the purple stuff that was carpeting the floor, it seemed to suck at his feet. He stopped for a moment, trying to figure out how something so soft looking could be so sticky, when he realized with a start that the stuff was beginning to climb up his leg.

An arm came out of nowhere and hauled him backwards. He came free of the Moss with a loud sucking noise, only to find himself face to face with an angry cyclops.

"What the hell were you doing?" Leela demanded. Her left hand pointed at him accusingly while her right aimed her laser pistol at Walt's head. "I told you not to go look! What were you thinking?!"

"I had to say goodbye." Fry said, defensively.

The fire in Leela's eye flared for a moment, then softened. "I'm sorry, Fry." she said, obviously mad at herself for her outburst. She shook her head. "You scared me to death when I saw you start to walk into that stuff. Don't you know what that is?"

"Umm, no?" Fry said

"It's Moss." Walt said. "The last of last year's shipment. This is where we store the stuff once it's shipped down the Hudson River from the initial processing plant. Of course, these silos will be empty in a few weeks now that there's no new crop to fill them back up again." He looked pointedly in Leela's direction, and then grunted when the cyclops even more pointedly jabbed him in the gut with the pistol.

Fry was only half paying attention. "Oh" he said, but his eyes were fixated on Chelsea's half buried body. Leela made no move to stop him when he moved to go to her.

The redhead had to go well out of his way to avoid the morass of purple that covered the floor, but at last he was at Chelsea's side. Chelsea's lower body was buried in Moss, but everything above her waist was free. A pool of blood was slowly spreading out from under her.

Fry knelt and regarded her silently. The emotions he was feeling were too complex for him to understand. He was still terrified of her, but he also felt a deep sadness. _Maybe she was right when she said my habit of seeing the good in everybody is a weakness._ She had tried to kill him. She was clearly insane, but Fry couldn't help remembering all of the good times that the two of them had had before their disastrous attempt to find the PE crew. The words that she'd said when they'd been walking home from Elzar's popped into his head.

"_It took me years to understand that she betrayed me, not because she was cruel, but because she was too ignorant to understand what she had done. I didn't hate her; I wasn't disgusted by what she did. I just had to tell myself that that's who she __was__. She couldn't help it…"_

Chelsea had never told him who the person had been. _Was it her mother_? He wondered, remembering that her mom had turned Chelsea's father over to the authorities when she'd discovered his illegal cybernetic experiments. Fry repeated the words to himself again, and realized that he couldn't hate Chelsea, either. _She wasn't cruel_. He told himself. _She just didn't understand_.

Gently, Fry reached out to touch her, one last time. There was a twitch, and Chelsea's lips moved. Fry screamed and jumped back, and Chelsea's eyes opened.

"Chelsea? Chelsea?!" Fry was screaming when Leela finally reached him. She momentarily forgot that she was supposed to be continuously threatening Walt with death when Chelsea moved her head to look at her. Luckily, Walt also seemed to forget that he should be trying to escape, because he appeared to Leela's left a moment later.

"You're alive?" Leela managed, and then raised her laser pistol. "How is that possible? Fry shot you in the chest!"

Chelsea coughed. "Don't worry." She said, weakly. "Just give it a few more minutes." She coughed again, and a fine mist of blood escaped from her mouth.

Fry was forcefully shaking his head. "No, no. You can't die now; not like this." He turned to Leela, his eyes wet. "Leela, we've got to do something!" He pleaded.

Leela stared at Fry for a moment. "But… But she tried to kill us. _Many times_."

Fry shook his head again. "But now we can get her help! She's not evil, Leela. Not really. She's just confused." Frantically, he tugged at her hand. "Please Leela, we have to help her. Don't let her die!"

Leela started to say something several times, but, for some reason, she found that she was unable to argue. _I guess I can't let her bleed to death on the warehouse floor._ She thought at length. _Maybe we can take her somewhere where she can get some help. _Then:_ Damnit, Fry's optimism is getting to me_. She sighed. "Alright." She said to Fry. "I'll see what I can do."

Walt grunted in surprise. "What are you doing?!" He demanded. "You aren't really going to try and save this- thing, are you?!"

Leela turned on him. "Unlike you, I can't let another person bleed to death while I stand around and watch." She snarled. "Chelsea isn't going anywhere. A layer of Moss half that deep was enough to keep Bender from moving even a footcup, and she can't be any stronger than he is. Now either help me save her life, or get the hell out of my way."

"But, but you can't… No!" Before Leela could react, Walt had reached out and grabbed the laser pistol from her. By the time he'd pointed it at her, Leela was already halfway through her flying roundhouse kick.

"Hee-ya!" Leela yelled, and her boot connected with Walt's jaw. The force of the blow twisted the balding man's head to the right, and a single tooth went spiraling away into the distance. Deflating like a punctured air mattress, Walt slid to the ground and didn't move. Leela was fairly confident that he wouldn't be getting up for awhile.

Still fuming- yet somehow feeling a bit better- Leela retrieved the gun and went to kneel next to Fry. The delivery boy gestured for her to hurry; the pool of blood was noticeably larger than it had been before.

When Leela reached out toward the wound, Chelsea jerked away. "Don't come near me, Leela." She warned. The all-consuming fury had left her eyes. Now they were filled with a combination of suspicion and fear. "Don't touch me."

"Don't be scared, Chelsea." Fry tried to reassure her. "Leela just wants to help."

Chelsea, of course, wasn't buying it, but, trapped as she was in the clinging Moss, she really couldn't resist. Leela was finally able to get an arm under the struggling woman's torso. Chelsea gasped when Leela's hand found the wound. Leela pulled her arm back as gently as she could.

"Fry" she said. "Give me your shirt. We'll try and make a bandage." _This isn't good. Leela told herself. It's a big wound, and she's lost a lot of blood. Even with all of those cyborg upgrades, her insides are probably all smashed up. She doesn't have much time left._

In about two seconds Fry had stripped off his shirt and handed it to her. Leela immediately began ripping it into long strips. When she'd made as many bandages as she could, she told Fry to grab Chelsea by the shoulders. "You'll need to lift her while I put the bandages on." She said. "It's going to hurt her." She met Chelsea's eyes. "A lot." She said, before looking back at Fry. "Whatever you do, don't drop her, even if she screams, okay?"

Fry's face turned pale. He looked at Chelsea and then back at Leela. He gulped, then nodded. "Okay."

"Alright. On the count of three. One, Two… Three!" Fry hauled up on Chelsea's shoulders, and Leela slid the makeshift bandages around her body. By the time Leela had tied them off they were already turning bright red. Chelsea started to scream, but immediately began to cough up blood.

When Leela signaled to Fry to let Chelsea down, the black haired woman was crying. "Why?" She asked between coughs. "Why are you trying to help me?"

When she realized that the question wasn't directed at Fry, but at _her_, Leela knelt down by Chelsea's side. "You really don't know, do you?" She asked sadly, and shook her head. She sighed. "Chelsea, I'm helping you because it's _right_."

"But, I tried to kill you!" Chelsea protested, confusion and fear in her voice. "Why are you helping me?!" Now there was panic in the woman's voice. Abruptly she was silenced by an all-consuming cough. When the spasms ceased, Chelsea turned to Fry, and there were tears in her eyes. "I don't understand, Fry." She cried desperately. "I don't understand."

Fry realized that something had changed in her voice. He knew suddenly that he was no longer talking to the sociopathic killer, but the kind, gentle Chelsea that he had first met. "It's okay, Chelsea." He said softly. "Its alright." He reached out a hand to her, and Chelsea took it.

"I don't understand." Chelsea said again, and then threw up a river of red. "I don't…" Chelsea's grip started to weaken. She looked up at Fry, one last time, her tears running down her face and merging with the deepening pool. "I'm so sorry, Fry." She said, and the life went out of her.


	14. Epilogue

**Epilogue: New New York, August 2****nd****, 3002**

Fry stood in the doorway of his Quantum Estates apartment and took one last look around. Somehow, it already didn't feel like home. With a sigh, Fry turned off the light switch and closed the door. His key turned in the lock, and there was an air of finality to the soft click that the deadbolt made as it entered its socket. He was going to miss the place, he knew, but he just couldn't bring himself to stay. There were just too many sad memories that came with it.

Slowly Fry worked his way through the bustling city streets toward Robot Arms. Bender had been eager to have his old roommate back, though he'd made a big show of being hurt that Fry had left in the first place.

It was a bright, clear morning- one of the best so far of the summer- but Fry didn't notice the sunlight glinting off of the skyscrapers or the flurry of air traffic that sped by overhead. His mind was far away. He hadn't taken Chelsea's death well. When the smoke of the nearby fire had finally gotten to the point that they could no longer stay, Leela had had to forcibly drag him away. He didn't remember how they'd finally gotten out of the building, or even that Leela had gone back inside to drag Amy and then Walt to safety.

Later, when they'd had some time to themselves, Leela had told him what they'd found once they were outside. Chelsea hadn't been kidding when she'd said the whole building was surrounded. Hundreds- if not thousands- of New New York's assimilated citizens lay sprawled on the ground in a ring that girdled the warehouse. When, hours later, Professor Farnsworth- who had apparently been overlooked by the cyborg army as he slept through the entire invasion in an armchair at Planet Express- inspected the technology that had been used to control them, he could find no reason for the sudden deactivation of the cyborgs. He could only theorize that Chelsea had somehow broadcasted a deactivation command to them in her last moments.

A few hours after their escape from the burning building, A DOOP helicopter had flown in to investigate the cause of the still-raging fire. The squad of soldiers that had been onboard was absolutely dumbfounded to find Leela, bruised, battered, and covered with ash, waving to them as they disembarked.

As was the case with most alien invasions and the like, the city was back to normal so quickly that it left Fry wondering if everything had just been a very bizarre, very bad dream. Chelsea's unique way of taking over the city had had the unintended side effect of keeping the casualties to a minimum. There were an unfortunate number of alien deaths, but all of the human and robot civilians that had died in the tragedy had been cyborgs killed by the DOOP or by Leela as the PE crew had been trying to flee the city. Leela would eventually confide to Fry that she'd had some troubling thoughts about the sewer mutants back when Chelsea had confronted the two of them in the construction site, and that she had been immensely relieved to learn that, as far as it could be determined, the sewer mutants had been left alone.

A special court was convened to determine whether the civilian deaths should be ruled homicides, but public support for Zapp Brannigan's 'heroic defeat of the cyborg scourge', as he termed it, was high enough that even the idiot hyperchicken lawyer wasn't able to bungle a self-defense ruling for Fry and Leela, who Zapp Brannigan claimed had 'helped a little'.

As for the New New Yorkers that had been captured by Chelsea and then assimilated, they started to wake up one by one right about the time that Fry, Leela, Walt, and Amy were being medivacced. Some minor surgery- or some time under the welding torch, whichever the situation dictated- was enough to remove the metal components that had been connected to their brains and central processors. Some people would have a few scars and some robots would have a blemish or two, but that was about the worst of it. In fact, a new fashion trend swept through the city as the hip and trendy started shoving fake cyborg implants into their bodies, giving them bragging rights about "being right in the middle of it all."

Amy had been different. The stun ray Fry had used on her had shut down her body, but left the circuitry that was connected to her intact. Apparently the circuits had become confused, and they overloaded. When Amy hadn't regained consciousness in twenty four hours, Leela had insisted that they take her to the hospital. There, Fry and Leela had waited anxiously for the doctors to run some tests. When Fry asked one of the M.D.s to explain what had happened to the intern, one of the doctors- a Dr. Clayton, he remembered- told him that, before she had blacked out, Amy had felt more pain than she was ever likely to experience again, and that he'd given her severe brain damage. Leela had been furious with the doctor for being so blunt that she'd followed him out of the room when he'd left- to talk with him, she'd assured. A few moments later there'd been some kind of loud noise and a muffled "hee-ya!", and Fry didn't see that doctor anymore.

Luckily, Amy had the kind of brain that seemed to be little affected by brain damage. It was only a week before the intern was released from the hospital, cheerful and clumsy as ever. She had no memory of being shot.

No one really knew what had happened when Mom- who had not been on Earth while it was being taken over- discovered that her main distribution center had been one of only three buildings to be destroyed, and that Walt had been there at the time. Fry was sure that he'd come up with some nice story to cover his ass. Walt wouldn't have to worry about the destruction of all of the Moss on Cardenia either, since all of the silos that would have stored it had been razed to the ground. He'd just have a new crop planted and, by the time the storage facility was operational again, there'd be a whole new harvest ready. It wasn't likely that he'd bother the PE crew anymore, either. Not after Leela had carried him out of the burning warehouse when she could have easily just left him there to die. Not that he was grateful for Leela's saving his life. Rather, Leela had taken the precaution of recording her conversations with Walt, and dropping that little fact to Walt on the medivac.

So, all in all, it seemed like everyone had come out of the disaster unscathed. Everyone, Fry knew, except for him. He understood, deep down, that he'd had no choice but to shoot Chelsea; Leela would be dead, otherwise. But, try as he might, he just couldn't bring himself to think of Chelsea as an evil person that had deserved death. Neither could he forget what a true friend she had been when they'd first met. But, worst of all, he couldn't get the image of Chelsea's last few moments out of his head. He kept seeing her looking up at him, her hand clasped in his, her eyes full of fear as the lights faded in them. Late at night he'd tried to figure out what it had been that had so terrified her. Was it fear of death, or had she realized in her final seconds that maybe, just maybe, she'd been wrong? But Farnsworth had said that Chelsea might have intentionally disabled the cyborgs, and then there had been her final words to him: _ I'm so sorry, Fry_. The words repeated again and again in his head. He couldn't get it to stop. It hurt that he could never know.

Bender was busily brushing his eyes with a toothbrush when Fry opened the door to his apartment. The robot had been in a jolly mood ever since the disaster. With the whole city to himself and all of the security systems disabled, he'd managed to score more loot than he'd otherwise have been able to steal in a year. Fry waited for the robot to finish and then coughed to let him know that he was there. Bender spun around. "Yo, meatsack! There you are!" The robot punched Fry lightly in the shoulder. "You ready?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Fry said, doubtfully. "Just promise you won't say anything to the Professor to get me in trouble this time."

"No sweat." The robot grabbed a handful of bills out of his chest cabinet. "Big Purple already bribed me to keep my mouth shut."

Fry noticed that there couldn't have been more than a hundred dollars there. _It didn't take much of a bribe_ the redhead realized. _Aww, I knew he missed me_. "Well, we'd better get going, or we'll be late."

"So? We're _always_ late." Bender retorted, but he followed Fry from the apartment.

Planet Express was a fair distance away, but Bender kept Fry busy with his latest tales of derring-do. Fry listened intently; it kept his mind off of other things.

The inside of Planet Express was dark and cool. Fry had missed its scuffed floors, its dingy corridors, and that distinct smell of asbestos, owl droppings, and singed lab animal that could be found nowhere else.

Professor Farnsworth was sleeping in his usual spot at the conference table when Fry entered the hangar, and Zoidberg was rummaging through a trash can on the hangar's lower level. No one knew- or cared- what had happened to the lobster alien during the invasion, though he'd almost certainly spent the entire time hiding in a hole somewhere.

Leela was in the kitchenette, pouring herself what promised to be an incredibly strong cup of coffee. When she saw him enter she reached for a second coffee mug.

"Morning, Fry." She called as she brought him his cup.

He took the mug and chose a seat at the conference table. "Hi, Leela." He replied. "Thanks."

Leela sat down next to him and smiled. "Don't mention it. Do you know where everybody is? The meeting was supposed to start five minutes ago."

Fry shrugged. "I dunno. I think Bender's here; at least, he went running off in this direction. I haven't seen anybody else yet except for you and the Professor."

"Oh well." Leela said with a dismissive wave of the hand. "The only people that really need to be here are Hermes and the Professor." Leela stood and turned to Fry. "You're sure you want to do this?" Her eye scanned his face; Fry thought she looked a bit tense.

Fry looked at her and nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, I'm sure."

The tension went out of Leela's face, and one side of her mouth twitched upward. "Alright. I'll go knock on Hermes' door. He's probably in there filing paperwork again." Then she was gone.

A few minutes later the cyclops returned with Hermes tailing behind in her wake. The bureaucrat muttered something about forms not filing themselves as he lowered himself into one of the conference chairs. Bender showed up a moment later. He took a seat between Hermes and the Professor and pulled out a cigar.

Hermes cleared his throat. "Now den," he said as he shuffled the stack of papers that he'd brought with him. "What's dis all about? "

Fry gulped. _Well, here goes_. "Uh, well you see… That is, I…" He felt Leela's hand on his arm and fell silent.

Leela leaned over and whispered in his ear. "Let me." She straightened and addressed Hermes. "Fry wants his job back." She said.

"Yeah, dat's what-" He was interrupted when the lounge door whooshed open and Amy skidded into the room. Panting loudly, the intern slid into one of the few remaining seats.

"Sorry I'm late." She said apologetically. "My bra wouldn't charge this morning. Bad D-cells."

Hermes grimaced, though whether it was from being interrupted or from what Amy had just decided to reveal to everyone, Fry couldn't be sure. "Anyway, like I was saying" he continued. "dat's what I figured." He looked from Leela to Fry, and then back to Leela. "But why are you campaignin' for him? Last I heard, you were madder at 'im than a green snake in a…" He paused. "Well, actually, I don't have an analogy for dat."

Leela folded her arms before speaking again. "Yeah, well, we patched things up." Her tone clearly carried the message _none of your business_.

"Hmm…" Hermes absently scratched his chin. "I dunno." He said at length. "With Planet Express just getting back on its feet, I can't think of a worse business decision than to rehire the mon who is responsible for seventy-three-point-four-two percent of da company's financial losses."

"Hey sweet, my fraction's lower than it was last ye- Ow!" Leela dug her nails into Fry's arm to shut him up. The cyclops was still deciding on what to say next when Amy spoke up.

"But Hermes, there'd probably be a lot more paperwork and junk to fill out if Fry worked here again."

Hermes blinked in surprise. "You want him back too?"

"Well, he did save our lives." Leela said drily.

"And the city." Amy added.

Hermes pursed his lips and frowned. "Bender mon." He said. "What do you think?"

Bender reached into his chest cabinet and pulled out his wad. "According to this bribe, I think Fry should work here again, as soon as possible." The robot chuckled and the cash disappeared.

After staring at Fry and tapping on the table for half a minute Hermes finally came to a decision. "Well… Alright. I guess I can always use da extra paperwork."

The group cheered, and Hermes offered a rare smile. Abruptly, the Professor, who everyone had sorta forgotten about by this point, woke up from his post-shower, pre-breakfast nap.

"Eh wha? What's all the shilly-shallying about?"

"Hermes just gave Fry his job back, Professor." Amy explained happily.

"Wha? Oh right, Fry! Good, and I was just running out of lab animals to experiment on." The scientist began to doze off again, but Hermes prodded him awake. "I'm awake, I'm awake!" Farnsworth feebly tried to push Hermes' hand away. "Now, Fry is back you say? Why, where did he go?"

Everyone else at the table exchanged glances. "Uhh, you fired him so he went and got a new job, found a new girlfriend who turned out to be some nutcake bent on taking over the universe, and then had to kill her to keep her from turning everyone into mindless zombies." Bender offered.

"Hmm… I seem to remember something about Fry finding my spaceship." Farnsworth brightened suddenly. "Say, has anyone seen Leela? The ship said she might be injured!"

"I'm right here, Professor." Leela said. "But thanks for caring." Fry decided not to correct her.

"Eh wha? You are?" Farnsworth squinted and adjusted his glasses. "Oh yes, of course you are. Healthy and as full of organs as ever."

"Fry?" The delivery boy turned his head to find Leela standing in the doorway to the smelloscope room. He'd come up to the balcony that ringed the tower to be alone, but he decided that he shouldn't hurt Leela's feelings. He gestured for her to join him at the railing.

Leela stood beside him and put both hands on the rail. Fry did the same. "Are you okay?" She asked.

Fry didn't say anything for a long time; he just stared off into the West, where the sun was just starting to sink under the horizon. Leela waited patiently. "I shouldn't miss her like this, Leela," the delivery boy said at last. "Not after all the bad things she did."

Leela put her hand on top of his, and Fry, startled, turned to face her. "Sure you should." the cyclops assured him. "From what you told me, Chelsea was a good friend to you."

"But she tried to kill you." He argued, shaking his head. "And me. And she hurt a lot of other people too."

"No." The assertiveness in Leela's voice was enough to make Fry pause. "That wasn't Chelsea. That was… somebody else. They shared the same body, but they were _not_ the same person."

"But which person was the real her?" Fry asked.

Leela sighed. "I'm afraid that that's up to you."

The two of them stood in silence then and watched the sun as it slowly disappeared. A few stars came out, and the city's streetlights began to flicker on one by one. A light breeze began to blow in from over the Hudson.

"Fry," Leela said, squeezing his hand. "it's good to have you back." And, after a long time, the delivery boy turned to her. He smiled.

**The End**


End file.
